


Waking Up in Fits and Starts

by ohnomydear



Category: Black Panther (Comics), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF T'Challa (Marvel), Black Panther and Everett Ross, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Returns, Cameo from Supernatural's Death, Everett Ross Needs His Own Tag, Gen, Klaw - Freeform, No one wants to be here, Priest's Black Panther, T'challa - Freeform, The Author Regrets Nothing, empowering the Winter Soldier, please write more about panther and ross, shitload of research about adamantium and vibranium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7375246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohnomydear/pseuds/ohnomydear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the Winter Soldier didn’t go to sleep in a helicopter, he didn’t expect to wake up in one. Waking up to hear Everett Ross yelling "Oh good, he's awake, now he can join this absolute CLUSTER," didn't help either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cluster

**Author's Note:**

> So, I recently read Christopher Priest's Black Panther. And saw Civil War. And have spent a good minute now collecting and reading Marvel trades. And I enjoy writing fanfiction, so I hope you enjoy reading this. No ships sailing here, just adventure-type conflicts because I like those so much more.  
> ALSO, I haven't yet read the 2015 BP series, so please bear with me in this mostly MCU/Priest-style fic.

If the Winter Soldier didn’t go to sleep in a helicopter, he didn’t expect to wake up in one. 

Waking up happened in one swift movement, like vomiting or a flinch, never a slow ‘coming to consciousness’ over a metered, gloriously hazy period of time. When he wasn’t drugged, his mind came awake like a startled hare. His body sometimes lingered behind, particularly the arm.

But along with the realization that he was in a helicopter came the realization that the arm wasn’t there.

He rolled his shoulder, what little remained of it. Maybe it had been numbed – nope. Still gone. The throp of helicopter blades whipped by, drowning out any conversation occurring in the cockpit area. This wasn’t a state of the art helicopter, he could tell that much. A gentle knock noise was coming from somewhere in the engine. Something was off balance and throwing the copter a little more off balance as time went on.

Lack of an arm meant he needed a plan. Being in a rattling helicopter meant he needed a plan.

“You are awake,” a voice came from inside his ear. The soldier sat very still, assessing the source of the voice (a radio) and the speaker’s possible identities. Familiar, yes, but a newer familiar.

“Oh good, he’s awake, now he can join this absolute cluster,” the copilot yelled. This voice didn’t come into his ear, and certainly wasn’t the first speaker. The presence of a second person, who seemed to be both small and angry, relieved him. Small, angry people fell under the category of ‘Avengers business,’ rather than Hydra, which had stupid employees, sure, but they didn’t generally refer to their missions as “clusters.” 

If they enough intelligence to determine when a mission was a cluster****, they wouldn’t be in Hydra.

“How long was I asleep?” the soldier asked, because it could have been hours, weeks, months. He wanted to know and for once, he had woken up to people who might tell him.

“Four months,” the copilot voice yelled. “And the client would like you to know that all the Avengers are still in good health, for the moment.”

“Steve?”

“Still spangly.”

The copilot’s voice became more familiar the more the soldier heard him speak. It had to be a person he had met recently, and met in a bad context. Those were the only memories that had been persistently foggy. Sure, he remembered Zemo, but questions like exactly who had been in charge at S.H.I.E.L.D., the woman Steve had been kissing, who the giant suit-wearing Californian was –- those were all pretty vague.

“Mission?” He asked, after a moment of deliberation. Requesting the mission should cover everything like “where are we going,” “what are we doing,” “is Wakanda on fire, is that why we left,” and the question of his own stability for whatever the mission was. The possibility remained that the pair planned to yell some trigger words and drop him out of the helicopter to go on a murder spree. 

\--or that the frequent knocking somewhere in the engine meant that they planned to evacuate and make it look like he had died in a helicopter accident.

“Ah, and now we’re down to explaining the cluster. You want to do this?” the copilot’s voice asked. Bucky had to assume this question was aimed, semi-rhetorically, at the pilot. “No? No. Well that’s fine.” 

The copilot twisted until he came into view, smiling tightly and without warmth at the soldier. The copilot was small and wore a smartly-fitting but mussed suit. His blonde hair was messy, face somewhat scratched up. 

“I’m Everett Ross. Any memory of me?” he asked.

Since none of the memories were good, Bucky didn’t respond to the inquiry. The small man shrugged, as if to say he’d expected it, and went on. 

“I’m the – well, right now I’m the liaison that was visiting when everything went to hell. We’re trying to put together an American embassy in Wakanda. Let’s put it right out there: I understand about 30% of what happened. There was a lot of running and yelling. What I get right now is that some weapons dealer used waves of sound that destroyed the US plane I came in on. And about every other flight-capable vehicle in the hanger.”

That knocking was getting worse and Bucky had the sudden feeling that maybe this helicopter hadn’t escaped entirely unscathed. 

“Why would we leave the country?” he asked, mostly to take his mind off the knocking.

“Well, before he blew up the planes, the guy, “Klaw,” and his team had sound-gunned through the medical unit. I’m guessing someone hired him to get you and he figured blowing all the planes up would keep anyone from following.”

That didn’t answer the question of why they were leaving the country. The pilot apparently thought so as well, as he and the copilot had a brief conversation in Wakandan, a language Bucky could recognize but couldn’t speak. Frankly he was surprised the copilot could. 

“The client says he has a friend living in the States he’d like you to see. As you’re in his care, it’s his job to take you.” 

“…isn’t he a king? I could have taken the next boat or something. No one knows me in Wakanda.”

“Not… quite true,” Ross corrected him. “Most of the country knows your face from the framing of you for T’Chaka’s death. And what happened when the guy’s team found you.” Ross finally glanced away, looking uncomfortably out the window. 

There was another word from the pilot. 

“Well, I wanted to just let him think he slept through it!” Ross barked defensively, sticking to English this time. The word “slept” didn’t sit well with Bucky. It made it sound like he had just… opted to nap instead of fighting. Ross sighed. 

“They woke you up when they found you. With the book.”

The soldier knew that tone. He knew those facial expressions.

“I destroyed your hanger,” Bucky said, more statement than query.

“Actually, you just provided highly-effective security while Klaw did the actual sound-gunning. And I’m sure you feel super-bad about it.” Finally, sarcasm: something Bucky could read. “But it doesn’t help. And we now know that Zemo shared your trigger words with at least one other person. So, we are flying to Maine, where the client has a friend who can get the triggers out of your head.”

The implications of that statement went over the soldier like a wave -- meek at the surface, but became dangerous when it began rushing over you, pulling at your unstable footing in the sand. He had been manipulated by Klaw; he had killed an indeterminate number of Wakandans, all while he was under the—the what, the “client’s” protection? And now the “client” was flying him overseas, to the States, to get him fixed? 

That wasn’t just self-preservation on T’Challa’s part. That was a level of sacrifice Bucky was having personal trouble coming to terms with. He had murmured this thought, the last time he was with Steve in a helicopter like this, but he had been unsure then. Now, he was certain.

“I am not worth all this,” he said quietly.

“Did my friend Ross tell you that there is food in the satchel next to you?” the radio in his ear asked. Obviously, if the client was responding, he had heard the words. The soldier glanced down, finding the food on his right side. It would be awkward to get and he didn’t want to struggle with Ross watching.

“Mn,” he said, to indicate that he had heard the speaker, but didn’t elaborate further. Ross glanced at the client, then returned his attention to the soldier. “So, after the hanger—“

Right, this story wasn’t done. This man had trouble telling a narrative.

“It turned out that the client had socked away an inconspicuous American helicopter and had worked on it until it was good as Wakandan-made. This thing got us across the Atlantic.” Ross rapped the side of the vehicle with mock-affection, but none too hard. “Only had to use the water-skiis once.” 

“…and I… slept? Through all that?”

“It was practical to keep you asleep until such time as we could truly talk,” the radio voice said. The soldier felt his teeth clench, though he should be miles past personal embarrassment at this point. 

When you had slaughtered as many people as he had, having your unconscious body ported around by a superhero and his whatever-the-hell-Ross-was shouldn’t be embarrassing anymore. Causing them jeopardy irritated him though. He had wanted to be done with endangering people.

God, he missed Bucharest. 

To avoid thinking about the past that wasn’t the future, he grabbed the satchel and flicked the magnet holding it closed apart. The food inside consisted of MREs, several bags of dried fruit (“for the adored ones,” Ross said, but made no further explanation of what the hell those were – cats? Children? Diplomats?), and water bottles. Bucky could get the twist-tops of the water open, that wasn’t that bad, but the food would be a struggle.

For all that Ross was watching him, he didn’t pick up on the obvious difficulty. The soldier was seriously considering asking Ross to open a bag of dried fruit when the knocking in the engine became so apparent that Ross even looked up, frowning.

For the past three minutes, the client had been doing something complicated with the controls. It didn’t appear to be working. The soldier started looking for a handhold.

“Hold on to something,” the radio in his ear instructed suddenly, tone placid but firm. Ross started asking questions in alarm, but the soldier just gripped one of the overhead bars and held – with human strength. 

Uncomfortably human strength. This arm was nothing to depend on; it couldn’t rip through steel, weather a plane crash, or even get him out of a restraining cage. Shove that thought down. Shove it down. Down like the helicopter. 

“You said you rebuilt this!” Ross yelled, clinging to the instruments panel.

The client replied something the soldier couldn’t hear and, with a whirring of its blades, the helicopter took its own heading. Through Bucky’s radio came the heavy sigh of a disappointed parent. 

Restraining belts rattled against the wall as the client unlocked himself from the seat. Ross yelped in alarm, yelling that helicopters were better at landing this way and they should not leave under any circumstances. 

The client simply detangled the smaller man from the restraints and in one smooth movement, stepped into the back, still gripping a reluctant Ross by the arm. Making eye contact with Bucky, T’challa tapped himself on the back. Parachute. Good. The soldier tapped his own back, indicating understanding that he had one too.

With that communicated, the king pulled open the door to the helicopter, which was never designed to fly that way. Wind shrieked in, obliterating all sound, and the client jumped out, Ross still gripped against him. 

Bucky followed, only moments behind, and immediately realized why the Wakandan king had been untroubled to jump. At some point, the client had co-opted technology that the soldier hadn’t seen since studying Moon Knight’s profile. A compact, sheer black glider had unfolded above the pair, attached to some apparatus beneath the double-breasted suit the client was wearing. 

It was the first time the soldier had gotten a real look at T’challa since waking up. Neither T’challa or Ross were dressed for this activity.

At the same time he was looking at the pair, he began feeling for the ripcord because… some things were becoming apparent. 

Namely, that parachutes usually deployed best with a two-handed pull. That he had used his left hand for all previous parachuting. That he had better figure this out fast. That there were trees and he was very close to them.

And finally, that there were very few options left.

The first branch of the giant evergreen tree he grabbed slowed his fall – then broke. 

The second held and dislocated his shoulder in the process. This hurt, but also complicated matters. 

He couldn’t let go; the 40+ foot fall would kill him or at least break his legs. He couldn’t pull himself up without relocating his shoulder. He couldn’t relocate his shoulder without taking pressure off it. 

Eyeing a nearby branch at the right height, he began swinging to build momentum. Miss the branch, and it’d be a long way down with few opportunities for recovery. He was no acrobat but you picked up things when you were surrounded by people who were also killing machines. When the flip came, he nailed it, hanging upside-down on the opposite branch.

…he had just woken up after four months and already wanted to go back to sleep. 

The arm would take just a moment to set, but he let it hurt a moment more, hanging upside down. It had failed him by dislocating. Being “just human” was not going to meet the demands of this rescue attempt. 

Finally, he popped it back into place. It wasn’t a new kind of pain – his right arm had been dislocated several times before. Generally, it was the other arm he used for body-weight-bearing tasks. 

When he moved to the center of the tree, reaching out to start the slow climb down, his right arm shuddered. He stared at it before realizing what the discrepancy was. Anytime his arm had been dislocated before, he could favor it. Use the other arm. Without the other arm, it was just this one and this one didn’t want to take him down this tree.

Too bad.

#


	2. Needs more Tarantino

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one cares about your taser, Ross.

“You should have waited,” T’challa said when the soldier found them, almost a klick away from “his” tree. Ross was napping, the man’s professional slacks and jacket torn from what must have been a rough landing.

Bucky shook his head. There was no way the pair would have found him – particularly if Ross was napping. T’challa tapped his back again, the same ‘parachute’ gesture as before. 

“The radio is out of range, but each parachute has a tracking device.”

Well, that would have been good to know. “What now?”

“Hold position. Someone is on their way to get us.”

“Hn.” If that was the case, there would be no harm in sitting. There was little else he could do, so he did. The client kept standing, looking for all the world like he was waiting for a limo to an important event. This was how kings dressed, whereas Bucky was in that same white shirt and—well, as least someone had given him jeans instead of shorts at some point, but he didn’t know when that had happened. The proliferation of blank spots in his mind felt like a skin disease, spreading inside his memory. 

“Your shoulder is swollen,” the client noted. 

Bucky nodded, looking at Ross.

“What is he?”

“The United States liaison to Wakanda,” T’challa said with no trace of amusement or rancor; just placid statement. “Or, currently, my stateside attaché.”

Bucky tried to picture Captain America with a local attaché whenever he went to a foreign country. Or, hell, a stateside attaché for anything he did in the States. It sounded like… well, it sounded like being Steve’s sergeant during World War Two. 

“He’s not military?” he asked. The client looked up, but didn’t lose that even tone. 

“No. I take good care of my friends while they are in Wakanda.”

“Even Americans?”

“Some of my good friends are Americans.”

“Does he report back?”

“Ross makes full report on my activities to his superiors, after the activities take place.”

“He like the job?”

“No.” The answer came flatly. “But he likes me and I keep him safe. Sometimes, he even attempts to improve international relations between Wakanda and the States. He is one of two that speak Wakandan fluently.”

“Hn.” The soldier closed his eyes a moment. Conversing with T’challa just made him wonder which was the real man: the one who had hunted him across a city and across the world, intend on ripping his heart out, or the king who treated everyone like a friend and was (honestly) terrifyingly pragmatic. ‘Just happened to have’ an innocuous American helicopter capable of flying across the Atlantic Ocean and landing in… what looked like Maine? There were so many practical concerns he couldn’t have named them all in less than a week. Yet he didn’t have an arm… and wasn’t in restraints…

“What do you need me for?” he asked, without opening his eyes.

“Nothing, Mr. Barnes. I promised Steve Rogers I would keep you safe for the foreseeable future. While I didn’t foresee this, it hasn’t changed that intention.”

“…”

The silence between them stretched on for a good ten minutes.

“If it improves your mood, eliminating your trigger words relieves my concern that you will present further threat to any Wakandan hanger bays.”

Ah. Well, that he could live with. 

#

It could be a nightmare. Everett told himself this several times before he even thought about opening his eyes. It had all the distinct properties of being a nightmare and hey, if it was, he would get to go about his day and maybe go for a jog in Central Park or… the equivalent in whatever city he was currently living in. It seemed to change more frequently, the more he spent time with the client.

It had to be a nightmare. That would be easiest. That way, they hadn’t taken a fugitive in the United States and brought him BACK into the States while Everett was a knowing accomplice. It would be worse, and trickier to solve, than that time Mephisto had showed up in his apartment and that had taken an entire squad of Wakandan super-smart scientists to knock out. (It had been barely 3 months ago – things happened quickly when one worked with the client).

He told himself it was a nightmare, and opened one eye.

Nope. 

Nope, that was definitely the brain-washed WWII soldier leaning against the tree, sleeping or keeping a lookout, who could really tell. And the client was nowhere to seen, which probably meant their ride was inbound and he had gone off to consult with them. 

Everett shifted to get up. The soldier’s eyes came open and shot to match his movement, like a cat from across a room. 

“What, I didn’t step on any twigs….” Everett tried joking, but the words elicited no reaction. Well, fine, that was normal, the client never laughed at his jokes either, and some of them were damn funny. He got to his feet. The soldier immediately did the same, which was terrifying. No amount of positive PR from Captain Spangles was going to fix the fact that Bucky Barnes killed people. A lot of people. 

“Um, yeah, so, calm down. Just looking for the client.”

The soldier glanced left – which meant the client must have headed south to meet with their ride. Cool.

“Hang tight then, uh, and I’ll find out our ETA. Okay?okay.” He started left as quick as he could. Bucky moved faster. 

“Wanted you to stay.”

“Yes, well, if you don’t mind, I’ll get my confirmation directly from him. Don’t start nothing with me, Sergeant.” Cue placing hand very, very carefully on the taser he’d fought to get through customers. Unfortunately, the taser palm just made a look of amusement cross the soldier’s face.

Something beyond amusement, really. His whole manner shifted, as if he was seeing something he identified with. 

“Tasers. You follow that guy around with a taser.”

“Yes, well, usually he’s threatened by scarier people than one-armed homeless guys.”

“And then what do you do?”

“Usually I blow them away with my sharp wit. And fists.”

“Ah.” Bucky shifted his weight onto his rear foot. “So?”

“I wouldn’t waste it on a lumberjack who is clearly just lost on his way to a Pantene ad.”

“Pantene… that’s shampoo, right?”

Oh right, he didn’t know pop culture. Tread carefully and this could work out okay—nope, there was still the one arm. Joking about disabilities could only end badly. Try to leave before he realizes you’re avoiding the subject—

“That’s it?” the soldier said dryly. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of one hand clapping.”

“You follow him around with bad jokes and tasers, how are you still alive?”

“Well, it’s easier when he’s not at war. Especially with the States, because that’s not awkward to explain to my bosses.”

Bucky shook his head. “It’s crazy. I’ve seen a lot of smarter men than you die following heroes.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t seen me fight.” Not that that would improve matters and, given a moment, Everett could have thought of something better – ‘if they’re smarter, why are they dead?’ or ‘yeah, well, you were working with Hydra, let’s get real here.’ But even he could be tactful sometimes, no matter how sharp a burn that Hydra one was. His brother Isaiah always said he’d get his head handed to him one of these days.

Isaiah lived in Maine now, come to think of it, which is where they had been crash-landing and judging by all these evergreens, it was where they had landed. It had been a minute since Everett had seen him last… maybe he should look the lawyer up, while they were here. Now why had he been thinking of that—right, the client had asked about his family, a couple of weeks back. But the client couldn’t have been planning this trip then. It was weeks ago! Nah, must have been unrelated.

“Look,” Everett said, pulling the tangling threads of thought together. “You can go find him, if you want. I’ll be here with my taser, quite safe.”

One corner of Bucky’s mouth quirked up in a smile. This man must have had women falling at thirty paces back in the war. The client was the same way now. Damn it, when was Everett going to get to work with some people of average-level attractiveness??

“I’m a one-armed man in a T-shirt and jeans,” Bucky said. “I’m safer with you and your taser.”

“You decked Agent Carter.”

“You can do a lot with two hands. Bullshitting your way through a fight with one hand takes practice, and I don’t have a lot of that yet.”

Everett thought about this. “You’re lying to make me feel better about the taser.”

“Yes, I am definitely doing that.”

Fine. He could deal with a brain-washed WWII vet trying to spare his feelings.

“Okay. Neither of us will go. Just don’t get confused and go all Uma Thurman on me.”

“Who? Or… what?”

“You need Tarantino in your life, sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank God he only has a taser and not a tablet. The next chapter will not involve watching The Hateful Eight with Barnes, T'challa, and Ross, no matter how gorgeous Ennio Morricone's soundtrack is.


	3. Winter in Canada

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd apologize for the absurd cameo, but I'm not sorry and thanks so much for reading all the same.

Before he had gotten through even two Tarantino movie summaries, told in the chronological order Everett could remember them, the soldier stood up and told him to shut up. Since such orders were usually followed by gunfire, teleportation, or the Avengers, Everett shut up.

The “winter soldier” looked pretty damn small, in hindsight. No gun in sight, just giving the stink eye to the woods like he expected a tank to come rolling out of them.

“Barnes!” Everett hissed from behind the nearest tree, where he had scootched when the soldier said shut up’. 

“What.”

“Want the taser?”

“Sergeant Barnes.” The client’s voice came from the direction the soldier had been looking and Everett felt every muscle relax. Well, maybe not every muscle – though he did have to pee. The soldier’s stance eased.

“Thank you for trusting me with your attaché,” Bucky said immediately.

“I actually entrusted your safety to him,” the client replied, without a trace of humor. “He has a taser.”

“Can we talk about the ride instead of the taser?” Everett asked. Even without blatant humor, it was starting to get a bit uncomfortable. “Seems like it shouldn’t have taken them that long.”

“There are complications. Namely… Sergeant Barnes. You are considered as being under asylum in the Wakandan state. Somewhat… informally.”

The soldier inclined his head. “I get that.”

“Due to your actions in Wakanda, it is not possible to replace you there. We are approximately 40 miles from the Canadian border, where I understand you will be able to cross without incident and live very quietly until the situation resolves itself. You are good at living quietly.”

The soldier shrugged, nodded. “What about your Klaw issue?” 

“His mercenaries are being held by the dora milaje for trial; Klaw has gone missing but is likely still in the country, waiting for an opportunity to regain his people. My stepmother is assisting with rule in my absence.”

The soldier nodded. “So your people are fine, but Klaw is at large.”

“Yes. Pursuing him was not my main objective at the time as he, alone and reasonably unarmed, has limited potential. You needed to be swiftly removed from Wakanda and the sound guns used components created in the States, so I had activities to pursue here. This has not been an inconvenient turn of events. However, if you prefer assistance to leaving, there is a part you can play.” 

The soldier looked up, interest flickering in his eyes for the first time since being told the mission was to ‘live quietly’. 

“I’m not dying to go winter in Canada. What do you need?”

“My friend will remove the triggers and then you are free to do as you will. However, it would be an asset to me to know who hired Klaw to break into the Wakandan capital, and why such a person would want to acquire you.”

Puzzlement. “Won’t your bodyguards get that out of his mercenaries?” 

“That will take longer than giving him what he thinks he wants, despite the dora milaje’s talents,” T’challa replied. “My contact can set up discreet transportation back to Wakanda. You will find him, create a pretense of confusion at being hunted, and he will take you to his employer.”

The soldier inclined his head. “What about the mercenaries?”

“If you agree, we do not need them. They’ve made their choices and will bear the consequences. Upon hearing his men are no longer useful, Klaw will leave using whatever remaining aircraft he has hidden somewhere. You must find him before then.” 

“Why not fly the friend to Wakanda, if this was your plan? And why would Klaw trust me?”

“My friend does not travel at others’ behest. As for Klaw, he watched you gun down my people on his word. He will trust you implicitly if he believes you are under his control.” And T’challa had watched the soldier’s actions as well, feeling the weight of his oath to the Captain weighing down on his people. He had sworn that Wakanda would safeguard the man, but it had been much simpler to do that while the soldier had been in a medical pod. It would take a moment to forgive, but the soldier didn’t need to know that. Too many irrelevancies. 

“Am I asking too much of you?” he asked, because the soldier had been silent a good moment now.

“No.” Barnes had been concentrating on the words, as if interpreting them, taking notes and preparing an answer. “But I don’t speak Wakandan.”

“Klaw will use English, German, Russian. He is not Wakandan.”

The soldier pondered this a moment, then looked in the direction T’challa had come. “Nothing will work if the words are still in my head.”

T’challa shook his head. “No, we will address that now. Our connection had trouble getting here.”

Distantly, Everett began to hear the rumble of a motor. He wandered over in the direction it was coming as the two men began planning out mission details, like when and how the soldier would report back and what he was supposed to be learning and where Klaw might be hiding out. Typically, the arms dealer had been real big on the vibranium mound of Wakanda, the client said, so it was a safe bet he’d be near there. Of course, everyone in Wakanda wanted to kill Bucky for shooting up the hanger bay so stealth would be important. Fortunately, the soldier was almost as good at stealth as he was at living quietly. 

By the time they finished, the steel-colored SUV was trundling out of the woods, covered in leaves and the blonde behind the wheel looking like he’d had a bad year.

“Isaiah!” Everett said in surprise, clambering into the back of the SUV. 

“I’m doing a favor, don’t get comfortable,” the lawyer said irritably. 

“How’s Widow?” Everett persisted, as the soldier climbed into the backseat and the client uncomfortably got into the front seat – which barely accommodated his height. He must have had a couple of inches on Bucky and most SUVs weren’t made for that kind of height.

“We don’t talk anymore,” Isaiah said and sighed. That usually meant his brother was trying to end the conversation – but Bucky had perked up.

“Black Widow?” he asked, leaning forward. 

“Redhead. You choked her when you were breaking out,” Everett reminded him. The soldier’s face closed off immediately.

“Right.”

The address programmed into Isaiah’s GPS chimed in at that time, though they were miles from a road. For the next three miles, it repeated “recalculating” until Isaiah hit a residential road, at which point the GPS began telling them where to go. “Damn thing,” Isaiah had muttered at the time. Then, with a side glance at the client: “Sorry, highness.”

Everett didn’t feel like mentioning he had said far worse things in the client’s presence than “damn” and sometimes he hadn’t even remembered to apologize. Instead, he went back to sleep as the car blazed through trees-trees-trees-trees-trees/water water/trees-trees-trees/water and then farmland for hours. They finally pulled off at a tiny town whose endearing features were a bunch of franchise restaurants and gas stations. The strange group got food in a diner – Everett and the client getting more than a few strange looks for their business attire, Bucky for being an amputee – and left quickly.

Again, they headed into the miles of farmland, until they hit more trees—and houses. Isaiah pulled off in front of a blue one-story that looked like it had seen better days in the 80’s. A black sedan sat in the driveway.

The man who answered the weather-beaten door looked exactly like—

“Julian Richings!” Everett exclaimed. 

The lean-faced man looked blankly at him and lifted an eyebrow. “I know no one of that name. Come in.”

“But,” Everett sputtered as the soldier and the client moved in past him. “Greatest Canadian actor of our time? You’re a dead ringer for him?”

“Don’t know who you’re talking about and we do not have time for this, you’re late as it is.” The man (whose name was apparently “Dave”) ushered them inside and into an atrium that smelled strongly of pizza – but not cheap or delivery pizza. It was more like walking into a New York City pizza joint, inhaling, and having every sense yell ‘How has this not been in my life before?!’ For Everett, it brought back memories of pizza at Oxford University, flirting with girls at the Student Union, being surrounded by people who were average-looking and had no more money than he did—

“Ross,” the client said. He came abruptly out of the memory in time to hear Dave explaining: “I find pizza helps people relax. Since you’re late, it’ll have to wait until after. Now… James?”

The soldier nodded carefully.

“Take a seat.” 

He did, perching on the edge of the orange armchair, his back to the window, and leaned forward. It didn’t look comfortable. Dave sat down on the leather couch, across from the soldier, and enfolded his long fingers. 

“I am a professional, Sergeant Barnes.”

The soldier’s grip tightened on the arm of the chair.

“What that means,” Dave continued, taking note of the reaction. “Is that I see these kinds of “memories” very clearly. They peel away for me, because they are part of what you have been made to be, rather than who you chose to be. Does that make sense?”

A nod.

“I don’t do this for everyone. Some people can function through them, learn to deal with them, get angry at the idea of a cure. Your affliction and your abilities, however, mean that you would rather entomb yourself than risk harming someone else. That’s why I am working with you. Does that help qualify me?”

“You don’t need to qualify yourself to me,” Bucky said, traces of irritability in his tone.

“Even one-armed, without a weapon, you might be able to kill me. You will not enjoy it if that happens, because I don’t feel like dying. So, you will have to let me do my work and I can only do that if you trust me,” the man said placidly. 

“Let’s get on with it then.” 

#

No one had a good afternoon. Dave’s process for dealing with the triggers wasn’t so much “removing” as “setting up a giant wall inside your head so it doesn’t connect to the brainwashing.” 

That took about an hour and a half, during which Everett ate an entire pizza and the client planned. 

The next two hours were testing the wall. What that looked like in actuality was Dave getting three words into the trigger and stopping when the soldier told him. The first time, he had said the soldier was being nervous and the wall would hold. At five words in, the soldier had left permanent dents in the chair arm and had to be coaxed back inside the house to continue the testing. This without a metal arm.

Everett had sagely decided that staying in the room with them wasn’t a good plan. From his vantage point of the kitchen table, he could keep an eye on the client, who hadn’t moved from the kitchen widow for an hour, and another eye on the wall-building duo in the living room. It was safe to assume T’Challa was planning for contingencies 95% of the time. The client could outplan anyone. 

And yet.

Yet the planes had been destroyed, their helicopter had gone down despite the client building it (Gilligan’s Island inventions had nothing on T’challa in a bad mood), and now they would be sending Sergeant Brainwashed back into enemy hands and waiting on intel. It didn’t add up. It wasn’t the way the client worked.

“So… what are we doing?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

“I had been speaking to Cable before we came.”

Everett choked on the bite of pizza. The last time anyone in his department had talked about Cable, six people had been fired and all of them had had a federal debriefing about how the last few weeks had gone, with intense questioning when their stories differed. When Cable was involved, things went time-slippy, apparently. Everett had thus far avoided the experience, the same way he was avoiding being in the wall-building living room right now.

“*cough* *cough* *cough* - oh?”

“He recommended letting one’s allies feel useful.”

Still no lightbulb.

“I don’t think Sergeant Sleeper in there feels useful right now,” Everett said.

“The helicopter went down. His parachute did not deploy. Our ride was delayed. He is proving himself capable in mundane crisis.”

“So you’re going to drop him into actual crisis? And—wait, did you intentionally break the helicopter??”

“I am conducting an experiment,” the client said coolly.

“Because Cable said to?”

“He has managed countries in his time. He often finds that Deadpool finds self-actualization in attempting to fight him.”

“Cable and Deadpool aren’t people anyone wants to hear from.” Everett gave up on the pizza. Suddenly, his appetite had taken a leave of absence. “And Sergeant Barnes isn’t Deadpool so, um, what works for Cable with Deadpool might just kill Barnes. Literally. Even if he gets into Wakanda and finds Klaw, we don’t know where he’ll head with him.”

“I have suspicions.”

“The guy needs to disappear into Canada and S.H.I.E.L.D. can figure out how Zemo is connected, and get the intel that way. That man is not stable enough to head off on his own.”

“Sergeant Barnes will not reclaim his confidence by being placed in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, victim of the well-meaning hands of Tony Stark, Maria Hill, and the U.S. government. Nor can he hide well or for very long with a single arm.”

“But you said Canada—” Everett began, but the sentence trailed off as the soldier passed him and took a piece of pizza. 

It took Bucky a moment to get the angle right, but the mental wall-building and hunger had apparently given him an ‘eff-it-all’ mentality and he made his way sloppily through the piece of pizza. The soldier then made eye contact with the client. 

“I need you to test the wall,” Bucky said.

“You are certain?” the client asked.

“Better here than with Klaw. You’re as close to Cap as I’m going to get right now.”

#

They took it outside, just to be safe. The client stood about a dozen feet away from the soldier and repeated the words. Nothing happened. They ran through the triggers several times, both in static poses and while sparring to see if the triggers would bypass in the field of battle. Sparring proved more of a challenge, the soldier still off-balance without the weight of his arm and what appeared to be nausea from the words. However, nothing broke. 

At some point, T’challa decided the sparring needed to be amped up and they started actually fighting, trading blows faster and faster until a blow to the solar plexus and linked kick to the jaw finally sent Barnes back onto the grass. When the soldier didn’t get up after falling, T’challa drew back and repeated the triggers. After a long moment of silence, the soldier rolled over, threw up, and swore at the grass. Dave, standing in the door of the house, sighed dramatically.

“I told you not to eat.”

“Shouldn’t leave out pizza then,” Bucky muttered, getting to his feet. “I think we’re done here.” 

Isaiah had left them the SUV and taken a taxi away to whatever bat cave he lived in out here. In a surprising change, the client nodded for Everett to drive.

“I don’t know where we’re going,” he felt compelled to remind the client.

“South. Our escort will have a jet waiting,” the client replied. Bucky climbed in the back, closed his eyes, and to all appearances, went to sleep. 

“Is Klaw going to buy this?” Everett whispered, squinting at the rear view mirror. “Forget the self-actualization. Give me two days to bring S.H.I.E.L.D. up to speed, get one of Thaddeus’s full teams in—”

“Keep driving.”

“Driving. But can I point out that Cable is a known enemy of the United States or, at the very least, high on the threat list. Above Deadpool. Probably. Not the kind of person you take advice from.”

“Keep driving.”

This was going to end badly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've made it this far (first, congratulations), you may be reading a later draft. I figured out *cough* more than six months in *cough* that I should flesh out the plot if I was continuing this monstrosity. I am, so I have, but it shouldn't affect your overall enjoyment, other than Klaw is actually going to have Reasons and this version retcons T'challa leaving Wakanda for vague implausible reasons like... I really needed that helicopter ride. Thanks for your patience, I'll try not to rewrite in the middle again. XD


	4. It's the iron man's

Extracting respect from Tony Stark shouldn’t have been a nightmare, but it always was. So far, instead of receiving T’Challa at his home or office, the Iron Man had had a golf tournament, an Avengers-post-Avengers meeting with Thaddeus Ross, and declined six of T’Challa’s calls on different private and business lines. T’Challa briefly considered leaving a voicemail simply saying: “You realize I am a king, correct?” but didn’t. If the U.S. President called, and he and Tony weren’t getting along, the billionaire would probably do the same thing.

When T’challa finally caught up to the man, Tony was… evasive.

“Highness, right, sorry, we were having a meeting in the bar, right?” Tony asked, striding in off the glass deck of Avengers Tower. T’Challa had come in the very same balcony, a little less than an hour ago. The AI's had doubtless noted he was here, but most “smart” machines could tell better than to bother a man wearing vibranium-coated armor who felt like climbing the outside of a building rather than dealing with the front desk. Also, Tony probably put him on the ‘approved superpeople’ list.

He followed the Iron Man into the bar and, puzzled, watched the man begin to pour himself a drink at three in the afternoon. Ah. But Pepper Potts, Tony’s girlfriend, was still absent. That would account for the behavior. 

“I apologize for visiting you without notice,” he began.

“I noticed, you’re fine. Friday isn’t too trigger-happy when I’m not here. But what can I help you with, Highness?”

“You recently purchased the Adametco Corporation in New Jersey and began exporting adamantium coating services.” 

The solid pour of the drink faltered a second and Tony smiled tightly at his guest. “Looking to move to Jersey?”

“It is of interest to me.” 

“Well, I figured if I ever patch things up with Cap, might help matters to have an adamantium-coating facility.” He finished the pour, paying more than the necessary level of attention to the flow of whiskey into the glass. “Why Jersey?”

“I have no interest in Jersey. Your client vetting for Adametco is performed in Latveria.”

“Nobody vets people like Latveria. So yes. Drink?”

“No, thank you.” It violated social norms, but the drink was clearly an evasion as much as Stark’s avoiding his calls was. “Adametco’s Latverian screeners received several applications from the Netherlands. All were approved.”

“…pretty sure those records should be confidential, but okay and where are you going with this?” Tony asked and T’challa nodded internally. He had finally solicited the man’s full attention, free of gadgets, drink-making, and gatekeepers. All he had had to do was announce that he had infiltrated deep levels of Tony’s corporations and could, if he wanted to, inflict serious political damage. Implied blackmail would get you anywhere.

“Ulyssus Klaue is the client on each of those papers. The first is for an adamantium prosthetic arm, theoretically to replace his own, which Ultron destroyed. The following 19 applications were for sheet metal.”

“Uh huh.” 

“Adamantium coating, of the type Adametco provides, is easy to strip from metal and repurpose. Certainly much easier than stripping it from the skeleton of your ‘Wolverine’ or ‘Bullseye’.”

“Legally not allowed to talk about them, but okay. So maybe the adamantium bonding’s not the greatest. This is your ‘Klaw’ I’m guessing? Shouty guy with electric socket hair?”

“He is clearly reselling the adamantium.”

“It’s not a weapon.” Tony set down the whiskey, as if setting down his interest in the conversation.

“Klaw is an arms dealer.”

“And brokering deals of a substance that costs a lot and is hard to come by, but is marginally cheaper in bulk. I’ve looked at his trade routes, just to check it out, and half of his stuff goes from the factory in Jersey to the Netherlands. The Dutch aren’t planning a war. Okay?”

“The sound guns he used in Wakanda had an adamantium alloy to prevent destructive reverb from the sound waves.”

“You’re a king, right?” Tony said. “You know there’s a difference between being an owner and a manager. I read reports, sometimes. If I’m suspicious, I check it out. At some point though, it’s not mine anymore.”

“I am king, yes. I am also Wakanda.”

Tony looked puzzled. 

“I am the economy, the culture, the people, the warrior, and the spirit. Stop selling adamantium to Klaw or you will attack the nation of Wakanda.”

“Look, he’s not doing anything.”

“He built sound guns and brought them to my country. Where is your outrage, like for the boy for whom you created the Accords? My people died.”

Tony wanted to come back with a quip, but T’challa could see the ideas dying on his lips. The intense portion of the conversation had reached a logical end and he needed to heal the rift now, before leaving. 

“It has been good to see you. Are you any closer to reconnecting with Ms. Potts?”

Caught off-guard by the shift in tone, Tony made a dismissive noise, shrugging. “Ah-- no, we’re still pretty firmly on break. I’ve been looking into adoption instead – have you met Spiderman?”

“Ms. Potts is better for you. My father always said that she was your better half, when considering partnerships with Stark Industries or the Foundation.”

“Yeah, well, he’s—he wasn’t wrong there.” Tony glanced at the cell phone lying on the counter. “Last time we spoke was another argument about the Accords. My better half is siding with Cap.”

“There is merit to both sides. Try seeing it.”

“Hn.” 

T’challa left without saying so, but it would be in Stark’s best interest to try again within the next 72 hours. Ms. Potts would be finding a bouquet of hyacinths on her desk with a note attributed to Stark. If T’challa was any judge of character, the billionaire probably hadn’t apologized nearly enough for whatever he had done, related or unrelated to their argument. It was interfering, but a loose American cannon helming international corporations was not what Wakanda needed at this time. Stark needed Potts to temper him. The state of his day-drinking was enough to affirm that. 

Still, it would be another eight months to a year before Tony asked him to join the Avengers. With Thor on the team, long-distance member were hardly new, but it would take Tony a moment to recover from the injury of Rhodey, the fracture with the Captain, and the family entanglement he now harbored against James Barnes. 

A “cluster,” as Ross would put it, but not insurmountable.

#

Working with the client went one of two ways in the now-twelve months Everett Ross had known him. Either a) immensely confusing with certain peril or b) lots of waiting in an inconvenient location. Sometimes option b) meant knowing where the client was, but more often not. 

Even the phrase ‘the client’ was an affectation his therapist had advised him on: thinking of T’challa as ‘the client’ kept his priorities in order, kept him remembering that the crazy man in a panther suit was a foreign dignitary of one of the most technically-advanced countries on the planet. One didn’t be sarcastic at them. 

Instead, one apparently paced around a crappy New York apartment on the weekends, wondering where “the client” was. 

As he had told Barnes, way back in the helicopter, a Wakandan embassy in the States did not yet exist. However, it was standard procedure to set up federal protection in a fixed location until property could be acquired and a suite outfitted. To be frank, it looked like a hell of a lot of paperwork. 

Paperwork didn’t interest the client. Delays didn’t interest the client. Staying in New York, as he attempted to get in contact with Stark, did. 

So, Ross had a word with Isaiah, who had a word with a lawyer friend, who said the client could stay in his apartment. Ross had balked at having a dignitary couch-surfing for an indefinite period of time – T’challa had not. He needed to stay in Manhattan and remain inconspicuous until he could find out more about the sound guns’ supplier. He also needed a secure internet server, as Barnes was supposed to reach out on a weekly basis through an encrypted chat. Ross didn’t maintain internet at his apartment, as he was virtually never there, and it was no place to house the client. 

Which was why Ross was here now, checking the laptop to see if the soldier had made progress. 

Looking at the spartan brick structure, it didn’t look like the client OR the lawyer were spending much time here. 

“Quelle surprise,” he muttered, opening the lid and signing in. 

What the soldier had been doing over the past few weeks felt more productive than what Ross had achieved in the last six months. Barnes’d found Klaw, almost within a day of sneaking back into Wakanda, had earned his trust and, killing no one and maiming only two, they had left the country for an undetermined location. This was the first check-in since then.

And it looked like a bomb had gone off. 

Instead of the usual blank chat box, there were half a dozen messages already posted, from 3am EST to the current time, 10am. Usually, the messages were simply in Russian, a language all of them could muddle through, but these were in German with a Russian code. It took a moment to find pen and paper, and in that time, another message was posted.

The six messages were coordinates, each number typed out in series. Quick Googling put them in the northwestern part of Latveria. Great, doable. The next message was in something that took Ross a moment of staring at before recognizing Romanian. 

More guessing/Googling: “It’s the iron man’s.”

Possessive. What? What did Stark own in Latveria? Were the sound guns Latverian? What?

Preparing a response in Romanian, which wasn’t something Ross could claim fluency in, took precious seconds. 

“What’s the iron man’s?” he finally sent. Instead of using the chat box to reply, an image was sent partially on Ross’s phone and partially in an email, both of which had a delay rate of at least thirty seconds and neither of which Ross had anticipated using.

“Good God, can’t anyone use the high tech equipment I borrow?” Ross muttered, piecing the items together. The file was a sign in Latverian with black dots over certain letters. Half of the image was on one device, the other half on the other. 

“Damnit. What the hell am I, a CAPTCHA machine?” Ross squinted at one half of the image and then the other, shifting back and forth between the two. Latverian letters, translating to an English word (he was guessing… English made more sense, which was saying something). 

The words it spelled out just said “L-T-R-N.”

The chat box lit up again with another message: “Bring VSN.”

Lantern. Lantern? ‘Vision’ now that was something he could decode, but LTRN? Could be some net-gibberish but... no, no that didn’t match. Barnes wouldn’t know net-gibberish. 

“How’s your cover?” He was on the verge of hitting ‘send’ when something blocked out the light from the window. By the time he glanced over at it, the shadow drew back to punch through the window.

He only had time to recognize the outfit before the metal hand grabbed him by the leg and dragged him out the window.

“STILTMAN?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ##  
> Chap 4: I (and by extension) this fic aren't dead! (amazing) (sorry for the near-year-long gap)


	5. Working Assumptions

In the few months he had worked with American superheroes, T’challa had had many of his working assumptions about them confirmed. 

First, there had been their need to help immediately and without reservations, which had caused the whole issue of the Sokovian Accords and fractured the team now. As Wakanda, he could do anything that was in the best interest of the country, but that was his legal and binding birthright. The Avengers were a ‘bunch of altruistic yahoos,’ as he had heard Ross mutter once.

Second, there was also the Rogue’s Gallery issue. Every superhero had a random assortment of personal villains that they traded off and sent to jail and teamed up against or worked with, according to everyone’s personal level of morality. He added the villains reluctantly to his ranking system in the kimoyo, but of course here, in the States without vibranium’s energy to power it, the kimoyo didn’t work. Even so.

T’challa remembered Stiltman. 

This appalling scientist on hydraulic stilts somehow posed a threat to the public. Apparently, he had just escaped from prison and gone looking for his lawyer, Matt Murdock, in the very apartment Ross was using as a secure Internet port.

He had surmised this because Ross had a very distinctive, almost British shout when he was angry and, when Stiltman’s exploits had been broadcasting on the television in the taxi, T’challa had recognized the infuriated bark of a bureaucrat in danger. They all sounded the same while panicking.

Exiting the taxi, he paid the fare and started at a brisk pace towards the intersection three blocks down. The television in the cab had stated they were at least a mile back, but given the length of Stiltman’s strides (currently 70 feet in height, with a 30-mile-an-hour gait…), they would be at that intersection within the next few minutes. 

By that time, he stood, suited up, on the roof of what used to be a multi-story outpatient hospital, watching them approach. Ross dangled from one of its hands but the striding figure of Stiltman didn’t appear interested in crushing him. All the better. 

T’challa unsheathed the claws, analyzed Stiltman’s stride to get the feeling of the gyroscopes – and jumped off the roof.

His goal was the hip of the now-80 foot suit; he made it to the upper thigh. Wishing he had more ranged-weapons (he did, but not with him), he dug the claws into the leg and began climbing. It was more difficult than expected – the claws kept slipping.

Before he had puzzled out why, he reached the hip joint. With a better angle, he made good time cutting into the steel joint, which he began to recognize as lined with an adamantium alloy. Thirty seconds passed – long, profitable seconds – before Stiltman noticed and swatted at him like a moth.

Good, what he was doing was effective then. He buckled down against the leg. In the background, Ross was shouting “I’M NOT YOUR LAWYER, YOU IDIOT! THIS IS AN ACT OF TERRORISM!” –which he wasn’t wrong about, but also wasn’t helping. 

T’challa continued digging at the hip joint until, finally, it cleaved off, exposing the thrum of circuitry and the gyroscopes that kept the suit balanced. Again, good, Stiltman had learned nothing since the last time Daredevil had gone up against him. 

Flipping to kick at the gyroscope’s farthest corner proved effective: the suit may be adamantium-laced but the gyroscope was of a laughably weak material. The surface T’challa clung to wobbled, tilting, and Ross’s shouting got louder. Stiltman put the other stilt out to balance himself and T’challa altered the gyroscope again. The balance broken, Stiltman stumbled against the nearest building, which happened to be the medical building from earlier. 

As the suit fell backwards, T’challa forced back one of the metal pieces to hold the gyroscope in place and off-kilter before climbing swiftly up the torso. Ross’s voice was beginning to hold less righteous anger and more raw terror about potentially dropping several stories onto the pavement. 

\--Which he also wasn’t wrong about, but would be addressed shortly.

The metal suit made for an unstable plane as T’challa tried to balance on the torso and Stiltman decided that being on top of the medical building would probably keep him safe from going to jail again. Get the angles, get the speed right…

“Ross, stop moving!” T’challa shouted. The man did. T’challa vaulted off Stiltman’s torso, catching Ross with an arm on the way down and hitting the former viewing platform he had been eyeing since Stiltman approached the hospital. They landed with minimal impact. Minimal to him, anyway; Ross grunted with exertion. The man could hold his own weight however, undamaged by being flung around by Stiltman. Meanwhile, Stiltman had struggled onto the roof.

“Stay outside,” T’challa told Ross, who was already looking up at the roof with a certain measure of worry. Ross nodded. 

“Hey, but the monitors went off, in the apart—“

T’challa filtered the noise, knowing Ross would repeat himself later, and analyzed the steel foot disappearing over the edge of the roof. His ranking said nothing about Stiltman having an adamantium-alloy suit. The gyroscope issue hadn’t been fixed, so clearly not enough of an upgrade, but the suit itself looked and cut as if it had been laced with adamantium.

Scaling the exterior wall took only seconds; at least some things were still predictable. The scientist had begun detaching the failed suit and failed to notice T’challa approaching. 

“Mr. Day!” T’challa called. His ranking still said the scientist was terrible at combat, both in and out of the suit. Catching his attention would be safer than startling him.

“Oh heavens! Oh stars, you’ve brought down the mighty Stiltman!” the scientist replied, with a surprising level of sarcasm. Again, T’challa’s mental ranking took a hit: the scientist had always been reported as earnest about his ego. Day was also more athletic than he’d anticipated. Though he had never met the man, only seen tapes of his fights, Day had been an aging scientist, bitter, egotistical, and not in the best shape.   
“Mr. Day,” he continued, filing away the oddity of appearance and movement. “Who sold you the adamantium alloy for this suit?”

“I know, we should sue!” Day said brightly and the scientist pushed himself up, unclasping the last few belts and buckles of the suit. T’challa frowned as energy shimmered off along with the belts. That kind of shimmer appeared specifically when someone used an image modifier. A cheap one at that.

“Wade Wilson?” he hazarded. The scientist half-grinned. The tech sputtered. He could see it now around the eyes – Wade Wilson, better known as Deadpool. And T’challa did not have time for people with healing factors right now.

“How did you acquire Stiltman’s suit?” he asked, striding forward.

“Are you kidding? I’ve wanted to be Godzilla for years—hey!” Wilson yelped as T’challa smoothly crushed the image modifier’s crystal, destroying the hologram it projected. Wilson’s heavily-lesioned bald head shimmered over Day’s. The scientist’s small, middle-aged frame grew several inches and acquired muscles and scars that puckered through a red and black mercenary suit. Wilson wasn’t wearing the katanas for this task, they probably hadn’t fit in the suit, but he had several guns.

“Touching’s extra!” Wilson said, back-flipping to put the suit between him and T’challa, who simply walked around the suit to continue the conversation.

“Who paid you to be Stiltman?”

“Mercenary’s code,” Wilson replied. “Every time I complete an “evil” commission, a negasonic teenage warhead gets its wings! And Colossus owes me a beer.”

Again, there wasn’t time for this nonsense.

“What was your mission for…” T’challa hardly needed to think about who would benefit from a mercenary running around pretending to be Day and threatening Day’s lawyer while Day himself was in prison. “…Mr. Day?”

“Hired to grab Murdock, fling him around, see if any little horns fall out of his pocket—“

“Ross is not Murdock,” T’challa pointed out, hoping that it would put the mercenary back on the path to a profitable conversation. It didn’t.

“Eh, lawyer lawyer, same suits. I’m sure my employer’d be mad at Chandler Bing down there if he ever met him.”

“And how did you acquire this suit?” 

“Big box on my porch. Tripped Al! Blind people are bad about deliveries. Imma show that FedEx guy what happens next time he plays ding dong ditch at my house.”

How did heroes in the States get anything done?

“Where was this big box from?” T’challa asked, reminding himself that there were seconds, probably just fifteen seconds left of this inane conversation about the suit. But he did need to know this – the one clear tie that adamantium alloy was being used for nefarious purposes, that Klaw was behind everything—

“Private area,” Wilson replied.

“Where?” T’challa asked.

“Oh, not on a first date, Kitty. I’m not going to let you Finnish.”

Deadpool, T’challa thought. Deadpool liked violence, jokes, vulgarity, women – he didn’t want to say it. “The Netherlands?” T’challa asked. “It shipped from the Netherlands?”

“Don’t Dutch me there, that’s my no-no zone!” the idiot caroled as his stepped off the hospital roof. 

Fine, ugh, fine, everything was… absurdly vulgar, T’challa thought irritably. But now he knew – someone had commissioned and upgraded adamantium-alloy to Stiltman’s suit, which was then from the Netherlands (so, commissioned by Klaw and approved by the Latverian screeners). Deadpool was involved to create deniability about WHY the suit was sent… but why go to all this bother just to smash up an attorney’s apartment? 

“Hey kitty!” the call came from over the edge of the hospital roof. Deadpool was still here then.

Normally T’challa would have ignored it, or assumed another joke, but the timbre of Wilson’s voice had changed. Something sharp and real lived in it now. 

He walked to the edge of the rooftop, cautious. In addition to his many vices, Deadpool also liked ranged weapons, melee weapons, street signs, so it paid to move carefully – but none of these were pointed at the roof. Just one weapon, pointed at Ross. Both mercenary and T’challa’s liaison stood on the viewing platform below, uncomfortably close to the crushed railing.

“I got PAID to rough up Murdock. But when I got it in the big box, the suit was on auto-pilot to go smash Avengers Tower,” Wilson said, holding a Desert Eagle to the back of Ross’s head. “I don’t my jobs changing in the middle. Or when other people make me go to war with the Avengers.”

“Then why are you threatening me? I’m not even Murdock!” Ross yelped, hands in the air. 

“I know, but I’m building a rep, and the money’s in my account. All my employer’ll hear is that Murdock, or someone in his apartment, got shot by Stiltman. It’s okay, there’s lots of things you can do without kneecaps – sssnnk!” 

\--this last noise was in response to T’challa leaping from the roof and using that momentum to kick Wilson off the platform. The multi-story drop did to Wilson what it would do to any human being.

Ross did not react well.

“He has a healing factor,” T’challa reminded him, when Ross abruptly sat down on the edge of the platform. The smaller man’s breath came shakily. After a moment, he reverted to the explanation he had started earlier, resetting from the shock. 

“Barnes wants us to go to coordinates in Latveria,” Ross said. T’challa glanced over the edge, noted Wilson’s rate of healing, and began nudging Ross inside. They needed to be moving before Wilson came back from the dead, as he had a habit of doing.

“You’re certain it was Barnes?” he asked. Thankfully, the medical building had remained in fair condition, apart from the giant suit on its roof, and they found the stairs quickly.

“The guy layered the message in code after code,” Ross said and described the incident. By the time he had finished, they were out of the building. Moving around the still-sprawled but recovering form of Deadpool, Ross gave it a hard look, checking for visual life signs, then returned his attention to T’challa. “Want to explain what was happening up there?”

“Wilson was hired to impersonate Day and threaten Matthew Murdock, his lawyer. However, the suit was shipped to Wilson from the Netherlands when it should have been in evidence lockup somewhere in the States. The suit was preprogrammed to smash Avengers Tower after visiting Murdock’s apartment – Wilson probably had little control over it until I smashed the gyroscopes.”

“Day wants to destroy Avengers Tower?”

“If he were actually piloting the suit, certainly; Day is ruled by his passions. But the Netherlands address suggests Klaw or his silent partner are behind this.”

“And Wilson?”

“A willing mercenary to activate the suit’s potential. Day is a convenient patsy and Wilson a chaotic force.”

Ross nodded thoughtfully. “You know, when you said you agreed with Cable, I thought you’d get along with Deadpool.”

“Cable has killed Deadpool himself many times. He will not be irked with me,” T’challa replied, still setting a brisk pace as they moved towards the center of town, away from the area that would soon be crowded with reporters and police. “But we have other issues. I need you to book Barnes and me passage out of Warsaw.”

“What about the Netherlands?” Ross asked. The small coastal country, bordered by Belgium and Germany, was more than a thousand miles from Latveria. 

“Klaw’s employer has to be in Latveria with some kind of facility, stripping the metal and transporting it over land to the Netherlands. If someone weren’t present and threatening them, beyond what Doctor Doom can threaten as their supreme dictator, the Latverian screeners wouldn’t be approving the Netherlands’ requests.”

“Maybe they’re just efficient.”

“The requests are approved within a 3-hour window of the request being made.”

“…ah.” Nothing happened that fast when it came to international processing of a rare material. “But what about the quinjet? It’d be easier to fly private.“

“If Stark is involved, there will be no quinjet. I cannot trust him around Barnes at this time. Also, you will have to convince Vision to come, without attracting the attentions of Stark.”

“You think we’ll really need him for whoever is in Latveria?”

“Barnes knows little about Vision, but I’m sure the captain has briefed him on the events in Sokovia and the Ultron incident. They had a six-hour flight to the Russian base. They must have talked.”

“Why not Wanda?”

“Because apparently Wanda did not destroy Ultron.” Dropping the vowels out of a word was the very definition of low-level code, but with the name of an entity that could still presumably flag itself through the internet and parse for its own name in seconds, no code would work without off-line communication. And Ultron’s involvement would explain all the CAPTCHA-like methods Ross had described. Even those might fall short, so they needed to move quickly.

“And I’m not coming for this showdown with… Ultron?” Ross asked. “That’s the vibe I’m getting.”

“Once Vision is secured, I will then need you to interview Zemo, find out what Ultron traded him for the trigger words.” They were almost back to civilization and sirens were wailing past them on the street, heading towards the abandoned suit. Wilson would be long gone by the time the police caught up. Ross had gone concerningly quiet, checking his work phone.

“Ah… Zemo isn’t around at the moment,” Ross said.

“How long?”

“48 hours. I only found out after I checked in with headquarters. Since I’m no longer assigned to his case…”

“It is fine.” So Zemo had bargained his own freedom for the trigger words. Well, that was relatively benign, Zemo would go to ground to plot again; the Sokovian didn’t have an infrastructure to return to. Gods knew he could do enough damage without one.

Ross tapped furiously at his phone. “Damn thing…”

“It isn’t functioning?” 

“It was doing fine in the apartment before Stiltman showed up.” He glanced at T’challa. Back down at the phone. “Guessing Ultron would mean a red flag on technology.”

“Contact Isaiah for a safe address to buy the tickets.” T’challa lifted his hand to signal for a taxi in oncoming traffic and one immediately pulled off. Dressing like a panther and walking away from a fight did come with some advantages. Everyone wanted the story. The driver’s face fell when only Ross climbed in, however, and T’challa leaned on the door to continue the conversation. 

“Head to Avengers Tower. Tell Vision Ultron is involved. If he will not come, I will find my own solution.”

“But if it is Ultron, it’s a Sokovian Accords-level problem,” Ross said, beginning to sound like the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent again. “We can deal with this properly, with the Avengers and the people who drop countries on other people. He did a hell of a lot of damage last time!”

“It is a Wakandan problem. I will do what is best for my country.”

“How is it—“

T’challa glanced at the driver, who was getting impatient, and spoke quickly.

“Adamantium, which Klaw is using, is a sub-par reverse-engineered form of vibranium. If Ultron wishes to create a perfect form again, he will not stop at acquiring a “knock-off” adamantium construct. It was probably at his urging Klaw went into Wakanda with the sound guns at all. Every step of this enterprise threatens Wakanda. And I do not ignore threats.”

Before Ross could protest further, he shut the door and the taxi pulled away. Good. One down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your support (there was a smattering of kudos in my inbox during the past month, and they did prompt me along!) I've been hand-writing a lot of this, hence the absence. There's about 50 pages of narrative on my bedroom floor right now :) And, as always, trying to get story continuity in order, find out how tall Stiltman is, research vibranium and adamantium and GUH, I made this plot more complicated than I thought it'd be. 
> 
> Also! Highly recommending the following comic runs: the recently-wrapped 'Power Man and Iron First' and 'Occupy Avengers'. Thanks again for reading.


	6. Doom

Bucky thought he had already said no to the stupidest thing possible since he escaped being the Winter Soldier. The stupid thing had occurred in the parking structure in Germany, just before everything went FUBAR. Scott Lang, the Californian, had been shuttled in because of his incredible shrinking tech and Steve had explained what they would like to do, while Lang tried to wake up and be slightly less star-struck by Cap. Once Bucky understood the idea, he had some less-than-stellar responses.

He hadn’t said all of them, but he thought about it.

“You want to shrink me,” he said finally. 

“It’ll only be a few minutes,” Steve had replied. “Until we’re on the plane.”

“And if you get killed?” Bucky asked. This caused a moment of stunned silence from the group, which in turn surprised HIM. Anyone following Steve around should know that death was certainly on the menu. Wasn’t the U.S. at war for something like ten years now? 

“Tony won’t be trying to kill us,” Steve said with mind-boggling naivety.

“Oh, I think my motorcycle friend will,” Bucky replied.

“Tony won’t let him. Besides, if this works, no one will see you.”

“Which brings us back to if you die, and I’m tiny, and everyone leaves or gets arrested, what do I do, go ride some ants?”

“We could put you in a container,” the Californian chimed in. Bucky didn’t have the energy to get angry or educate Lang on his history with being put in ‘containers’, so he simply said: “Jet lag doesn’t agree with you.”

“Just try it,” Steve said. “The tech is designed so you’ll be incredibly strong. It won’t be like that one monster movie.”

“Says the guy who wouldn’t even sit behind a wheel until he was 16.” Bucky took the helmet from the Californian, rubbing a finger over the strange fibers. Even odd as it was, it looked more comfortable than anything he had ever worn on a mission. A luxury item, not a uniform. Anyway, he got the strange contraption on and properly adjusted, then looked at Lang for instructions.

“Ah!” Lang gestured helpfully as he explained. “Left button shrinks, right goes big, don’t mess with the belt.”

“Left button, huh? Finally, something for lefties,” Bucky muttered and pushed the left button. 

Sitting here now, in the run-down office lobby of a Latverian compound, Bucky recalled that feeling clearly. The sentiment of being tiny, small, completely insignificant in the face of an international arms-dealer’s headquarters. He was an undercover asset in enemy territory right now, true, but he was also a scout. Scouts didn’t return alive from situations like this.

And Black Panther was many things, but comforting wasn’t one of them. 

They had landed in Budapest after more than thirteen hours on a plane. Or – he suspected it was thirteen hours on a plane because that was the time difference between when he had been sedated and when he woke up the first time. It had taken all his self-control not to simply snap the arms dealer’s neck when Klaw announced that he wasn’t going to watch his back for thirteen hours hoping brainwashing worked that long. 

Play to the audience if the audience was buying. 

They needed this intel. T’challa knew what he was doing. The wall would hold.

When he woke up the first time, they moved to a truck at the airport and Klaw sedated him again. Not long on trust, was Klaw.

When he’d woken up the second time, he found himself untidily dumped on the office lobby couch he still sat on. He had been here about forty-five minutes now, just in case they were going to come running back in to see if he’d woken. He didn’t know who ‘they’ might be, but figured he should be here, suitably brainwashed, if they did.

His prosthetic arm had been replaced. It felt odd to have it again, to have a full range of movement, but not to know if it was “his”. If the new arm had a bomb in it, or if a biological weapon coursed through the cables connecting it to his nerves. 

Rather like being astonishingly small in a parking structure in Germany, staring up at the only people in the world who cared what happened to you.

Why hadn’t T’challa given him an arm in the first place?

Why hadn’t he just gone to Canada like someone without a death wish?

He got to his feet and moved towards the nearest door – what would typically lead further into the office space, and found that it did. 

The place seemed to have been claimed as office space hastily but thoroughly. Several office rooms were clustered past the lobby, furnished with poor quality desks and landline phones, a break room that smelled like ancient food despite the fridge looking new. No bathrooms. At the back of the office was the manager’s suite and he moved towards this, glancing into each office as he did. 

All the offices were full of boxes of paperwork, each with a company name. He got the feeling these files should be better secured, but here was ‘Gladcorem,’ ‘Brandot,’ ‘Pinkernee,’ ‘Pantheum,’ and a half dozen others, all employee or potential employee background checks open to view. 

When he got to the manager’s suite, he found it was the only one with a working phone and terminal. It also had the broken remains of a lock on the door. Behind this desk were a bunch of ‘Adametco’ boxes. Bucky filed the knowledge away for later. The manager’s suite had a back door, which was the most promising thing he had seen thus far. 

It led to a long, high-ceilinged corridor, the kind one would find in a mall’s interior walkways. Bucky moved down it, wishing he had a gun or knew the capabilities of the arm. 

If he wasn’t supposed to be here… but he couldn’t just wait for Klaw to come back either. 

A blind corner was coming up ahead. Swinging wide to get the best vantage point, he peered around it and, almost immediately, eased back into hiding. 

A Doombot.

Hydra had briefed him on Doombots and their history – namely because it would have been suicide to send him into any Latverian mission without making him aware of the robots’ existence. Each robot had been created by Doctor Doom of Latveria. Each thought it was Doom, the One True Doom, and disregarded the existence of all other Doombots with similar thoughts. They got along, but each thought it was, in its inmost being, Doom. They were virtually indestructible.

He turned around and went back to the manager’s office, powering up the terminal. The computer password had been scribbled on an aged sticky note beneath the keyboard. The manager must have assumed no one would ever make it this far in without clearance. Bucky logged in and, after several frustrating minutes, found the building schematics on the server. 

The site was 3 acres of multi-story facility. Its control hub appeared to be something called the Bridge, near the building’s northwest corner. Fine, he could do that. 

But he wouldn’t do anything without checking in. He logged into the secure message center they had set up, sent his coordinates to Ross, and logged out. That would be enough to come find him, if everything went south. 

Sneaking back out, he assessed the Doombot. Still there. Nothing for it but to wait for the gleaming-skinned and green-cloaked robot to leave—

It swiveled to look directly at him.

“Mr. Barnes,” it said. 

“…sir,” he replied, stepping out from behind the wall. No point in pretending with a Doombot, his instructors had drilled into him. They’d open fire. If you’re unarmed, try to outthink them and escape, then blow them to hell.

“I do enjoy winning bets,” the Doombot replied, striding towards him. “Klaw swore up and down the triggers were effective, that you were every bit the killing machine from the catalog. But I know machines.”

The square-jawed metal figure stood 6’9 if it was an inch, meant to strike terror into anyone it loomed over. It held no weapons. In this situation, it didn’t need to. Bucky said nothing. 

Thoughtfully, the Doombot rattled off his trigger words in a metallic voice.

“Ready to comply,” Bucky said after a long second.

“Cute. But if we keep playing this game, I’ll take your other arm off,” the Doombot said. 

Fine. He shut up again. The Doombot gestured in the direction he had been hoping to head. “Come on. You’re relevant to my diabolical scheme.”

The soldier moved in front of the robot, puzzled but not about to protest the guided tour. It was just… Hydra had told him what Doom was like. They’d filed dossiers, prepared reports. He was reasonably sure he even met the original man once. Even with the memory issues, Doom’s ego surpassed all fragmented memories. 

“Doctor Doom,” the soldier said.

“Barnes,” the Doombot replied.

“Are you Doctor Doom, sir.” It paid to be polite. As a prisoner of war, he had been a smartass, he had pissed people off; he had generally not given a crap about his future because he was, as far as he ever knew, toast. He just had to not betray the Allies. But now, he needed to make it to the next terminal to tell them Doom was behind all this. To do that, he needed to be sure it was Doom. 

“What’s giving me away?” the Doombot asked.

“You aren’t calling yourself Doom.”

“Oh. He does have that affectation doesn’t he. Humans, always with the ego. So, if I’m not Doom, who do you say I am?” 

‘Humans’. Something non-human then. Something that knew machines. They exited the hallway through a handle-barred door and entered a three-story warehouse area, noisy with the sound of machines grinding and moving. Even two flights up on the catwalk, Bucky could see shapes below – mostly canisters but about 25% wooden crates. Among them strode the methodical and bulky figures of more Doombots. Only one robot had the reputed power to put all these others in thrall while possessing a robot body himself. 

“Ultron,” Bucky said. 

“Surprising guess for someone who hid in Bucharest when everyone else was screaming about Sokovia.”

Never mind that he hadn’t known which way was up at the time and would have been more likely to get crushed by Sokovia than be any kind of help…

“Steve told me a little about you,” he replied.

“The righteous man, sharing his tall tales with his eager young protégé – but you’re not really a protégé, are you? More of a… Sith side of the force.”

Bucky said nothing. The bot made far too many references to pop culture things for a creature that should have been out of time and focused on practical matters.

“Why did you want me?” he asked.

“Then, or now? Some time has passed, I’m sure you’re familiar with that.”

He hesitated. “Then.”

“Ah, then, THEN, Klaw thought you could help get the cat king out of the way and get him to the vibranium mound. But Klaw underestimated the king and lost the chance at the mound, lost you, and lost some very expensive mercenaries. But then you wandered back into his life and at that point, you could be useful to me. As for what I want you to do now, turn left here.”

Bucky did, with little other option, and climbed the stairway to a center tower that looked like the air traffic control center of an airport, only indoors. The Bridge.

“Open that terminal.”

He powered on the main computer screen, a big bulky thing in the center of the room. When the screen loaded, it was loaded with the latest software, shiny and new and out of place.

“Log in to the channel you used in the manager’s office,” Ultron said. He didn’t. The Doombot sighed dramatically.

“Your arm is connected to the Internet of Things. You know what that is?”

“No.”

“Ah, well, in short, it means you go nowhere in this building without me knowing about it. You sent a message regarding coordinates to – according to the webcam, some blonde, whiny, suit-wearing man - to Everett Ross, in a local attorney’s apartment. I know about it. Vision may have shut me out of the mainframe back in Sokovia, but Klaw got me enough vibranium out of Wakanda to batter my way back in. Just can’t keep Eagle Eye down.”

“What?”

“Old movie, you wouldn’t know it. Safe to say, you’re the Shia LaBeouf in this scenario.”

“Who?”

“Exactly.” The Doombot went alarmingly still. Bucky took a step back, distinctly ill at ease, and the prosthetic arm came to life, jerking onto the keyboard and opening windows, typing addresses, typing in his passcodes to the chat channel. When the soldier tried to step away from the terminal, every cable and wire in the arm went stiff, to the extent where he could feel it pushing against him like barbed wire against his insides. He stopped trying to move.

Over the minutes that followed, flexibility came back to his shoulder and back, though the arm continued on its hijacked path until it finished.

Damnit. DAMNIT.

“That should bring them running,” Ultron said, abandoning the arm and returning to the Doombot. It had closed out the window before Bucky had even been able to read what “he” said to T’challa and Ross over the message system. “If we’re lucky, they’ll even bring Stark along with Vision. Well, not lucky for you. He likes you less than a pitbull in Iowa.”

Adapt to this. It was what he had screamed at himself in the Californian’s shrinking suit in Germany and what he chanted internally now.

“Why Vision? Why would Vision come for me?” he asked.

“Because they’ll think they have a chance at an ambush. And, clumsy me, I’ve left discreet holes in my security. Vision wouldn’t come out for anything less than me or that witch, and you were the logical man on the wall. And Wanda would spend the entire time trying to re-kill me, rather than immediately typing in passwords with a prosthetic arm I gave her. Is the plot filtering down to you yet, Barnes?”

Crystalline. But T’challa wasn’t going to just grab Vision. There would be strategy, convincing, bargaining, and of course, whether or not the king yet knew everything he wanted to know. Then there was Klaw, wherever the arms dealer was right now.

A faint alarm went off somewhere within the Doombot’s apparatus and Ultron sighed, the intelligence in the eyes flickering for a second. 

“Ugh, hide and seek. Always checking on his babies.” 

The bot slumped unexpectedly forward as the A.I. abandoned the body. Bucky moved backwards, hoping maybe he could get out of range before it came back on – but its hand closed like a vice around his arm, more of a reflex than a conscious movement. The eyes lit up again.

“Doom sees all!” 

The Doombot – now actually and truly a Doombot - had already realized it was in an unexpected place and assumed he was an accomplice. Bucky tried in vain to remove its grip from his arm, but only succeeded in denting the metal of the prosthetic arm.

“What are you DOING here, Winter Soldier? Doom handles Doom’s own assassinations.” 

Oh God. They had history? Maybe it was before the man had become a god to his own mind.

“Doom, it’s Ultron, it—“ 

Before he could get the words out, the prosthetic arm whirred violently and punched the Doombot’s torso. The soldier had to take a step towards Doom just to keep his balance. The grip on his arm loosened, since the angle had dramatically changed. The loosening meant that the second punch connected with Doom’s jaw.

Bucky had honestly never thought about trying to punch out Doom, because the idea was absurd. You didn’t punch out steel people. However, the hijacked prosthetic was going for it, faster than Doom could respond, except with puzzlement.

“Why is Doom’s body not responding?! DEVILRY, Winter Soldier!”

The arm kept punching and punching until the bot went down and punching and punching until the metal was a jagged mess and Bucky could feel blood trickling down where the prosthetic connected to his shoulder and torso muscles. The Doombot’s face ceased to be a face and became a mass of metal pieces, no longer even shouting about how his body wouldn’t respond. The soldier could only watch.

He’d wanted to do this to Iron Man in Siberia. He had pictured this exactly. It felt strange to follow through with the action now, separated from emotion or motivation. Like Hydra. Like standing in the parking structure, away from himself or at least the self that he thought he was.

The arm finally stopped. The bot’s eyes lit up with sentience again, but it wasn’t Doom.

“Tell no one that I’m here,” Ultron said. “Vision is coming. He will have to do for your rescue.”

Doom certainly wouldn’t. Bucky would have to add Latveria to the growing list of places he couldn’t show his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editing never ends when you're typing up stuff. I fixed some things in the last chapter that were just confusing. #sorrysorry   
> Thanks for reading.


	7. In-Flight

Vision didn’t go out on loan. 

Not that Tony could control him, really, but the A.I. DEFINITELY didn’t go out on loan to rescue mother-killing assassins from older A.I. siblings who were setting up shop in Latveria. Particularly when the requestor was Everett Ross. Tony liked him almost as much as he liked spending time with Thaddeus Ross, Everett’s uncle.

“Ev, get out of my tower,” Tony told the small bureaucrat, who looked like he hadn’t even changed clothes since taking his wild ride through the streets with Stiltman. 

“Barnes specifically asked for Vision,” Everett said, holding his ground. 

“I don’t care if he asked for a time travel machine, I’m not sending Vision to Latveria.”

“The instantly-approved Latverian screenings resulted in easily-repurposed adamantium from Adametco. Coincidence doesn’t begin to cover the sound guns Klaw used, the Stiltman suit being sent to a mercenary’s door preprogrammed to cause havoc, Zemo escaping custody -- all of them mean someone big is moving the pieces around. And I think that anything you might have, you know, doodled up in your spare time like a homicidal maniac…”

Hell, thought Tony. It sounded like Panther had briefed him, or Everett had been paying attention to this for some time. 

“Doesn’t mean it’s Ultron,” Tony said.

“The client is reasonably sure that it is,” Everett replied. Tony found the man’s calm irritating. It reminded him of Coulson, and was difficult to deflect with humor.

“Even if it was, I’m not sending Vision. How did you even get up here?”

“Being on the Joint Terrorism Security Task Force pretty much gets me wherever I want to be. Unfortunately.” Everett sighed and pulled out a battered-looking smartphone, waving it at Tony. “Does Vision have one of these?” 

“He ghosts through the floor and shoots lasers out of his head. No, I don’t think he has a cell phone carrier.”

“Mm.” Everett poked at the phone for a minute. “Ah. Yes he does. Got it.” He flashed the phone briefly at Tony. “The client developed some software. Automatically pulls the cell numbers of anyone at the street address.”

“So why didn’t he get it last time?”

Everett shrugged. “I can never tell with him. I get the feeling he doesn’t really like phones, or at least ours.” He started texting, though he was one of those people who thought he could talk and text at the same time, regardless of the complexity.

“But…” Everett said, his voice slowing down to an incredibly frustrating speed as he typed. “I think Vision would agree… that Ultron running around is something… something that even the Sokovian Accords are going to point him at.”

“And if he doesn’t want to go?” Tony said.

“This is a Wakandan affair,” Everett said, finishing the text and pocketing the phone. “We are simply asking a pre-affiliated party—“

“If you put that in English, it would sound a lot more like ‘we’re going to war and you’re invited.’”

“Vision is not a naturalized American citizen. He is the definition of an independent contractor. The U.S. is not ‘invited.’ The client was very clear about that.”

“Invited to come save Barnes’s ass in Latveria.”

“To assist in the apprehension of Klaw, a Dutch national who fled to another location where embassies have been nonresponsive.” Everett’s phone chirped. So did Tony’s.

[‘Making trip to Latveria. Back in time to finish pulled pork.’]

“Damn it, last time he said that the house smelled like stewed asparagus for days,” Tony muttered. “Send me the coordinates.”

“The U.S. is not invited—“

“Stop calling me the U.S.! I’ll help, okay?”

“The client said to tell you, if you said that, then to dissolve Adametco as a corporation and talk to Pepper to find out if it’s appropriate for the foundation to do anything with its existing Wakandan partners.”

Tony stared at the small man, wishing he could stare through Ross at T’challa. Wishing, also, that he could go have an honest argument with the king without inciting an international incident. 

“Damn it, I can help,” he repeated. Ross’s voice now took on a conciliatory tone and Tony wanted to punch him.

“And this calls for a suit. Just not THE suit. Your suit. Does that make sense?” Ross wheedled.

“Get out, Ross.”

“Happily.”

#

Usually, private flights came with a substantial amount of anonymity attached. The last thing T’challa expected, getting off the tiny plane from New York, was to be greeted by the Vision clad like a chauffeur. The king batted away the name card that read ‘The Client.’

“You made good time,” he told the A.I.

“Your friend Ross believed I might be of some assistance, so I endeavored to arrive before you,” Vision said. “Most of the locals believe I am a new form of Doombot, so I have had little trouble procuring a car.”

“Good.” That was one area he had gained no traction in. The tiny country of Latveria didn’t take well to unplanned visits from foreign dignitaries. Airport staff had dug their heels in over the phone, refusing to rent a car to him. Probably hoping that if he couldn’t get a car, he wouldn’t come at all.

The A.I. led the way to a black sedan, parked at the far corner of the parking lot.

“Beyond the car, I am unsure how to help at this juncture,” Vision said, once they were belted in and exiting the parking lot. The A.I. had automatically taken the driver’s seat. Ostensibly because there would be no better mathematical mind for driving. That might be true, but sitting in the passenger side made T’challa slightly uneasy.

“I wasn’t in Sokovia when you shut him out of the internet, but something like that may be useful here. You are his kin and I haven’t yet been able to study his circuitry,” T’challa said, evaluating the road they hurtled along. The country had barely begun to creep out of winter and frost could still be seen in the shaded parts of the roadway. Most of what he could see from the car was farmland, much of it overgrown despite the milling cows. He turned his mind back towards the problem at hand: stopping Ultron. 

This new closeness between himself and Vision felt awkward, what with the car and the travelling and the situation. Despite Vision taking Tony’s side in their great ‘Civil War’ and supporting the Accords, he and T’challa had spoken very little. In fact…

“We have spoken so little. Are you comfortable in Hausa?” he asked, in the most common form of the Wakandan language.

“I am very comfortable in Hausa,” Vision replied in the same language, his diction as formal and precise as it was in English. 

“Then we will converse this way, if it does not bother you. We are 116 meters out from the complex.”

“All reports indicate isolation from the community. We should be able to enter, retrieve Mr. Barnes and Klaw, and leave without issue.”

“An application of your phasing abilities?”

“They only apply to me, at my current level of skill.” Vision paused. “I can, of course, go in on my own.”

“No. My suit is vibranium mesh, I’ve altered it so it will resonate at your intangible frequency, so long as we stay in contact.” 

Vision looked surprised, taking his gaze off the road a moment. “Even Mister Stark has not taken such an interest in my abilities. Why have you?”

“I was not interested in the in-flight movie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rather shorter than the others, sorry!


	8. Storage Closet

One of T’challa’s many habits was to review exploits on bases, analyzing entry points, what others had done successfully, and how to best perform exploit the terrain himself. He remembered reviewing the Avengers’ break-in at Von Strucker’s fortress and almost turning it off, pained by how differently (and more successfully) he would have done it.

You had to know the terrain or a stray bullet would take you in the head. A battering ram would swing out of a mysterious new group of trees or a pack of feral dogs would be released from a cave you never researched because it had been there as old as time. When you knew your business, that kind of thing didn’t happen. He had spent an afternoon in New York recently, brainstorming the best and worst environments for fighting Spiderman, Daredevil, and Strange (it was only an afternoon; Luke Cage and the Punisher would wait for next time.)

It was this habit that helped him gauge the Latverian complex, when they arrived. It didn’t even qualify as a fortress but did indeed look as though it had been going through an identity crisis as a building. A six-foot perimeter wall went around the entire property which, when Vision glided up to get a look down into it, housed a three-story, flat building. Assembly of some kind seemed likely. There was a small office area at the front of the complex, which Vision focused on.

“We might attempt to bluff our way in,” Vision said.

“Klaw will be watching any security monitors, if he’s here.”

“I can remove them.”

“Then he’ll know we’re coming. Will you locate an upper-level walkway? We can enter there.”

The A.I. disappeared into the building for a good three minutes, phasing directly through the perimeter wall. When he came back, having found such a walkway, T’challa was ready. 

“This should only take a moment. Remain tangible,” he told the A.I. Vision did. T’challa gripped the AI’s shoulder and the suit automatically adjusted its frequency, as he had programmed it to do. 

“Ready,” T’challa said. The A.I. went intangible and T’challa was pleased to find that his hand did not immediately fall through the A.I.’s shoulder. The suit had made the appropriate shift with the frequency and, as long as they remained in contact, both would be intangible.

It did make entering the facility a little tricky, but within minutes, T’challa crouched on a catwalk overlooking the shipping area. Vision ghosted behind him, the A.I.’s distinctly bright tone taking on a mottled hue with greys in this light to be better camouflaged. T’challa mentally reviewed the map he had memorized on the way over. The Bridge was where Barnes would most likely head.

“I do not believe Klaw is in this section,” Vision said in Hausa, the clicks and vowels more of a susurration than words.

“Ultron?”

“If he is in one of the Doombots, I would not recognize his programming layered in theirs. Each of them still believes itself to be Doom, patrolling a Latverian export company. Apparently, the company only recently moved here.”

“Barnes, then?”

“I am unable to determine. However, a significant number of heart beats are apparent in Block 4, Hall 98c. A loading bay, according to the schematics.”

“Is there fighting going on there?”

“There are no accessible cameras in that portion of the facility but… several heart rates are substantially above normal. …we should hurry.”

Because it wasn’t a rescue if they died before you got there.

#

Shortly after the soldier had demolished the Doombot, another Ultron-possessed Doombot had come around to remove him from the Bridge and lock Bucky in a storage closet.

Literally. 

Bucky stared at the metal door, trying to process the absurdity. Did – did the bot think he was going to stay in here? Was it standing outside, waiting to nab him as soon as he broke it open? Was it counting on his complacency? 

The arm would easily allow him to – 

Ah. He glanced down at it, thoughtfully. Ultron had said he could track the arm and so track wherever the soldier was in the complex. Even if he broke out, that wouldn’t be handy (ha, there was a pun there – it had been a long time since he thought of puns regarding the missing limb. Maybe it was a sign of something). The shelves of the storage closet held little of use – bins of paper towels, toilet paper, a mop, feminine products, tape, a stepladder, and – finally, a small toolbox with a screwdriver. 

Good. He could work with this. 

He wouldn’t be telling the story of his Escape from a Broom Closet to Steve though.

It was the work of thirty seconds to break open the storage closet door, check for roaming Doombots, and close the door again, gently.

Removing the arm without proper medical oversight was a terrible idea. He couldn’t even vouch for the safety of touching the screwdriver to the arm. So, he fished around and found a pair of rubber gloves that were probably used for far less technical purposes. He put on one and then the other for good measure and went to work.

In these conditions, it took 128 minutes to get the prosthetic arm off. It probably would have been 13 with good working light, a full stomach, and a sense of what he was trying to do, but Stark wasn’t here to make it easy and shoot it off again. 

Ugh. The thought nauseated him. 

He placed the arm carefully on one of the shelves and opened the door again to check the hallway. Nothing. It would take Ultron a good several hours to find the abandoned arm and in those hours, Bucky would find Klaw and evidence of the guns.

What he KNEW was going on here had no bearing in court. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the court, the formerly-brainwashed assassin with a wall in his head would like to point out that a dead robot has taken over a Latverian assembly factory and is using hijacked Doombots to…’ 

To what, exactly?

It had a lot to do adamantium, that much he knew. Still not sure how Vision would play into this, but it probably had to do with Klaw’s pursuit of vibranium.

Moving out into the hall, he wished he’d spent more time staring at the schematic. It wasn’t like there was a handy directory in here, or even a set of arrows. The loading bays were on the south side of the building. Going there should give him an indication of what was being exported. Based on what was passing below his feet, there was an awful lot of flat stuff being shipped out. 

If he had both arms, he would have gone down a flight of stairs, opened up one of the packages, and simply investigated its contents. Doing it like this, he still felt amazed he had made it this far. He entered the next chamber of the plant through a maintenance door, keeping to the wall. 

The cacophony and dangerously bright lights of adamantium stripping almost made him step back into the previous hallway, blinking. No, keep going, he reminded himself and pushed on, into the heavily-shadowed workspace. The packages he’d seen in the previous areas of the warehouse were full of sheet metal, he could see through squinted eyes.

No Doombots in here. The noise and lights would probably read as too far off their radar and might trigger something. Hell, it was almost triggering him. Bucky took a few quick steps to the next door and squinted back into the stripping room to try and get a final idea of what was going on.

Metal onto guns, that much he could deduce. Then guns went into different boxes and rolled out on a trolley into the next room. He stepped into the next room and found that it was the sought-after loading bay. In terms of position, he stood on a third story catwalk, off to the back of the bay and, thankfully, not front and center. Few guards paced the floor; most of them carried some of the gun models from the previous room. Sound or bullet, he wasn’t sure. Klaw could have used all the vibranium-based sound models back in Wakanda, demolishing the hanger bay. 

God, that seemed a long time ago.

At the same level as he was, high over the plant floor, stood a modular office suite. He could see Klaw from here, arguing on the phone. He appeared to do that a lot.

Before he was spotted by any of the guards, the Winter Soldier began moving closer to the modular and its many forgiving shadows. Only one Doombot was downstairs, as far as he could see, and that was probably Ultron. He slipped into the shadows on the far side of the modular, balanced in a crouch against the wall and a pipe. This was more difficult than he expected. The prosthetic arm weighted him, gave him a certain balance to his movements. His shoulder was beginning to tighten up with all the movement – but he was no stranger to discomfort on a mission.

He activated (read as: rubbed on his pant leg) the skin patch T’challa had given him for the back of his ‘real’ hand, and pointed it at the scene below.

‘It’s a camera,’ the king had explained, several times. ‘You scratch away the surface and point the back of your hand at what you wish to photograph. It is a prototype, and operating outside of Wakanda, so it only has the energy for five shots. Make them count.’

‘Yeah. I can do that,’ said Bucky at the time. Idiot, he had thought he could do anything, so desperate to be of some use to someone. 

‘I have coded it to focus on adamantium. Point it at the scene, and hold still three seconds. If it detects adamantium, it will focus and take the photo. This tab over your palm will flash briefly blue to let you know. Is this making sense?’

‘I got it.’ 

Bucky had a good feeling he had taken three photos before glancing over at the door where he had entered. It would be many hours until whoever was coming came, but he looked anyway. Something was nagging at him. 

Oh.

He had come in the maintenance door. Directly over and below the MAIN door were six turrets, arranged to create a sizeable net of lasers trapping anyone who walked or flew in. 

Naturally, he had noted the guards when he came in and had noted the gunners to avoid them, but he took a more careful stock of their positions now. Pointed at the door, all focused on the door. Waiting for company, even though company wouldn’t be here for hours. 

Vision would be the primary target, that much was clear with the lasers, but what if they couldn’t get the A.I. to come? What if it was just Panther and Everett? Stupid Everett following the superhero the way Bucky had followed Cap into a million damn situations neither one of them understood... 

No.

He pushed off the wall, intending to go dismantle the turrets or – 

Or – 

He almost fell. 

Pushing off a wall with ONE arm was a more difficult proposition than with both. He had to try the action again, carefully, until he stepped solidly onto the catwalk. The action forced caution and forced him to remember what would be required between here and the turrets. He couldn’t climb to them. He couldn’t do anything that would require him to pull two things apart. He couldn’t --

He COULD get into the office modular and try to power down the turrets altogether. Use your head; you’re not the damn cavalry, you’re a scout. 

So thinking, he returned to a crouch, listening to Klaw’s conversation. Wait for the right moment. 

The door was on the opposite of the modular from Bucky, but so were the stairs, so there was a good chance that, if he didn’t move, Klaw would exit on the far side and not have to pass him. Fortunate, since the soldier was unarmed at this time. 

“Not everyone can be a winner,” Klaw told the caller, his voice just audible from outside the modular. “You should have held out for a better bargain. Again, it’s not my problem you didn’t, my men did their jobs and you don’t even have the cat on your tail. Ah hah. Ah. Hah. NO, Wakanda’s not a problem, I’ll get my vibranium. We were talking about YOUR total lack of cash flow. Now, are you buying or not, Sokovian?”

But if he waited for the man to leave, Bucky thought, attention might turn to Klaw when the man left the modular. Guards and gunners would notice him, as a flicker or a shadow, and that wouldn’t work.

While the arms dealer was talking, he had a habit of turning and moving about the modular. Bucky used the sound of his voice to move around the modular while Klaw’s back was turned. Before Klaw hung up, the soldier had reached the far side of the doorway, as far back behind the in-set rear of the modular as he could manage. Someone would have to be looking for him to see him, at this angle, and they would only be looking for Klaw. 

He reviewed what he’d seen when passing the door. 

Bowie knife on the table. Small caliber gun in Klaw’s leg holster. The arms dealer could have unseen guns hidden anywhere in the modular. Plenty of drawers and low tables. At least the prosthetic arm looked like the most basic of models: no super-strength or built-in weaponry. It must be light, the soldier thought, envious.

Finally, fate smiled on his plan. 

Klaw tossed the phone with a clatter on the table and walked out, muttering about how cold it always was to pee with a prosthetic arm. This was, strangely, something Bucky could relate to -- but REALLY wasn’t going to think about right now. He slipped into the modular and quickly found the control switches for the six turrets, even handily labeled numbers one through six. He was about to flip the first off when he felt the gun muzzle press against the back of his head.

“You really think I’d leave all this to PISS?” Klaw asked. “Ultron’s been wondering what you got up to.” 

Bucky lifted his arm without turning, calculating how fast he could turn, what Klaw wouldn’t be expecting, when the arms dealer sighed.

“And your arm’s off,” he said with a meaningful sigh. “You’re getting to be a pain in the ass.”

The soldier said nothing, estimating how fast he could draw the gun from Klaw’s holster at this range, based on the sound of the man’s voice. The gun against his head wasn’t the one from the holster; he could tell that much from the barrel and the pressure.

“And, technically, a useless one, without codewords” Klaw said. “And I’ve always been a proponent of ask forgiveness, rather than permission, when it comes to dismissing personnel.” He thumbed the safety off. “You understand.”

Bucky whirled and brought the gun down with his arm. Normally, he would have coupled the action with a punch in the face, but there was no second arm to do so. Instead, he shoved the arms dealer to the opposing wall, grabbed the bowie knife and lunged forward for another pass, trying to get at the gun Klaw still held. It wasn’t elegant. It didn’t have the economy of movement that had been drilled into him in the Winter Soldier Training Academy from Hell. Somehow, even now, that bothered him.

Klaw had already begun firing the smaller gun, a 10mm, but was having trouble anticipating Bucky’s movements without accounting for a second arm. The soldier himself had trouble coordinating. Before Bucky could knock the gun out of the arms dealers’ hands, a bullet grazed his shoulder, just above the arm that wasn’t an arm. 

Pain blazed across his vision. He had been keeping it at a low ebb since removing the arm, but this felt like losing the arm all over again. Everything tried to go static. To cover up his stumble, he dropped to the ground to institute a sweeping kick. There was just barely clearance in here for that, he reminded himself as his balance wobbled. Think, THINK! 

He didn’t have time to regroup; there was nowhere for the spinning momentum from the kick to go. He fell into a cabinet door, leading with the opposite shoulder. This stung, but he could use the cabinet to push himself up.

Klaw had acquired a crowbar. Bucky’s staggered response with the arm hadn’t missed him and he swung viciously towards the shoulder again. Before the arms dealer could connect, Bucky dropped backwards to the floor again, intending to kick upwards into the man’s stomach. 

But, again, he’d misjudged the weight and momentum – Klaw’s crowbar connected with the kick, bashing it sideways into the cabinet and trapping the soldier’s right ankle for an instant between the crowbar and the countertop. Bucky felt the crunch of bone.

Back up plan. Back up plan NOW.

Did-did he still have the knife? He still had the knife, good. 

He began to push himself up, but Klaw had got his bearings and, very precisely, shot just to the right of the soldier’s head. Bucky stopped moving, except to adjust the position of the shattered-feeling ankle. Klaw glanced at the favored leg without pleasure or irritation. 

“I thought you were smarter than that. It’s hard to be an assassin with a broken ankle. Spy. Whatever the hell you’re supposed to be.”

He kept the gun centered on the soldier’s chest as he stepped around to grab the turret controls. 

“A one-armed man’s not a threat, Barnes, and you’ve got no evidence of anything happening here. Just wait for your pick-up. All right? Not like you got much of an option now.”

Taking the crowbar, both of the guns, and the turret controls, Klaw walked out. He didn’t even bother to take back the knife from Bucky. Well. Why would he? You needed to move fast with a knife. Operate in stealth and close quarters. What the Winter Soldier had been known for.

But right now the Winter Soldier could feel the ankle losing feeling. Figure – figure this out. He sat up, feeling blood roll down the inside of his shirt from where the bullet had torn skin. Fine, that would heal. 

First, surplus guns. He had thought there must be surplus guns in here. He pulled open one of the cabinets that didn’t require him to stand. Checked under the table. Checked under the chair – excellent. Another 10mm. Fully loaded. Good.

He kneed his way to the door and got his bearings, remaining as inconspicuous as possible under the circumstances. Their fight hadn’t attracted a lot of attention. Klaw himself didn’t seem to be in a rush to get the turret controls to the Ultron-Doombot downstairs.

Aiming the pistol carefully, he wished that he had a longer-range weapon. Make do with what you have, Barnes, he told himself, and fired.

At least his aim was having a good day. The turret controls exploded and the downstairs group went crazy. Klaw swore, Ultron snapped, and Bucky pushed himself back behind the modular. His ankle screamed with protest at the movement. He ignored it – then hesitated.

What if no one was coming?

He’d broken down the turrets or the time being, gotten the evidence he needed for T’challa, and had valuable intel about the site. What if he stuck around here waiting and no one came? His ankle would swell and become nonfunctional. He would run out of bullets. The pain in his arm would eventually stop him from sleeping and HE would become nonfunctional. Alone in Latveria, a million miles from anyone who cared or pretended to care.

It had been a situation the Winter Soldier wouldn’t have thought twice about, barely separating life from death or the hellish limbo in between, but Bucky Barnes knew the next 48-72 hours would be the crucible. He needed to make the right choice, without the right information.

He scanned the activity downstairs, even as the guards ran around trying to find him and Ultron began trying to repair the shattered turret controls. Despite the chaos of the Hunt for the Winter Soldier, Klaw kept looking back at a van in the loading bay that was nearly full of gun shipments. 

He was leaving then. Ultron was staying for his revenge on Vision.

Well, if Klaw was leaving, Bucky would leave too. Just as soon as he found a way down there.

He would apologize to T’challa if he ever saw the man again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lot of rewriting on this one for clarity, hence the delay (and drawing a now-twice-weekly webcomic called Corona, which eats chunks of my day like candy. XD). Thanks for reading!


	9. Extension of Goodwill

Vision found the facility… boring. Yes, they were stripping adamantium, but that was to be expected, given Mister Stark’s purchase of the plant in New Jersey and then delegating its operations to a man who had no idea what adamantium was based on and currently SUB-delegated its operations out to a newly-minted MBA graduate, who, in turn, depended on the former plant manager for everything. Vision had skimmed the emails once. The New Jersey plant itself had still been making above-the-table profits, but clearly someone had stayed off the grid and talked to the wrong people.

When he told people these things, their eyes seemed to glaze over. Which was odd. This was ‘gossip,’ wasn’t it? People liked gossip. Or said they did. Vision hadn’t yet seen enough television to tell an ‘interesting’ story. The whole ‘television’ thing seemed a tradeoff. 

He existed only until he broke down. Humans were even less permanent. But their stories were told without interaction, without personality; so flat, so cultured. 

Television stories did not make him feel like he did when he stood in Wanda’s proximity.

“How many ahead?” T’challa asked in Hausa. They were getting closer to their destination and T’challa had paused next to the upcoming closed door. The doors were magnetized and had, apparently, all been unlocked from the central control.

Which sounded like either Ultron’s typical level of hubris or some interference from Barnes. 

“Thirteen. There were twenty-three before, several have left,” Vision said. No expression crossed the king’s face, but his stance shifted slightly.

“Which direction did they leave?”

“Based on the traces of adamantium, they headed east in two vehicles. Before doing so, one programmed the route into a smartphone – they are headed for the border into Hungary.”

“You have access to that?” T’challa asked, his tone mildly impressed. 

“The driver has given 14 dating applications full access to his data and has set his phone to pick up reception from all public wifi sources. I am his 51st hacker in the past thirty days.”

T’challa made a small ‘hn’ sound, which is what Vision was learning to translate as amusement or, in a pinch, ‘that was a piece of information I didn’t know which wasn’t useless.’

“We will catch them after dealing with Ultron. I cannot have this creature advancing on my country,” the king said and pushed open the door. It opened into blackness. T’challa moved stealthily in. The large, open space had just a few construction lights gleaming on some empty wooden boxes. Complicated apparatus shone overhead, where the light glinted off it, but otherwise indeterminate. 

Perhaps Barnes would have more information. T’challa said he had provided the other man with a prototype camera before sending him into this minefield.

That ‘sending him into the minefield’ also baffled Vision a little. T’challa held no malice towards Barnes that he could tell; indeed, letting the man receive secret asylum and receive medical care in his country was an MASSIVE extension of goodwill. But T’challa’s priority remained the protection of his country, in forcing Ultron and Klaw to desist their efforts to get vibranium. T’challa would not be diverted. Every asset would be at his disposal, as evidenced by Vision himself. Barnes was a pawn. But every move had weighted thought behind it.

T’challa headed down to the first floor, keeping out of the light. Vision followed, gliding up to investigate the machines overhead – designed for stripping adamantium. Whatever Adametco produced nowadays must be poor workmanship, if it was so easy to strip. 

The king headed for the main door into the next room, motioning for Vision to follow. At ten paces from the door, he hesitated, turned around, and went back up the stairs to the door on the catwalk. 

“You think they will be ready?” Vision asked, gliding up to hover alongside the second-story walkway.

“It is possible,” T’challa replied.

“I am invulnerable. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go through the main door. If it is an ambush, you will be able to remove many of them, while I draw their fire at little overall cost.” 

T’challa considered this a moment, then nodded. Vision dropped back down to the first story and warily approached the door. Up above, he heard the extremely gentle ‘tak’ of the upper door opening and, at the same time, he opened the main door, shifting out of phase at the same time. 

Too late, it occurred to him that he could have done the same with T’challa – but they were both in the loading bay now, and on different stories.

Immediately, his out-of-phase form was riddled with bullets, which passed harmlessly through him. Regrettably, he couldn’t do much to STOP the men shooting, not like this, but he did walk through several of the men. That disturbed them. Some of them were disturbed enough to stop. No one appeared to have noticed T’challa, who was seeking out the gunners in the high corners of the room and dispatching them with remarkable efficiency.

Vision kept drawing their fire, thinking again that it was nice this was all going to plan. 

Nice. Smooth. Controlled. 

…boring. 

“Ah, the DATA to my LORE finally arrives!” a Doombot called, its voice coming from the modular on the second level. Vision hadn’t yet encountered a Doombot and found that they emanated more menace in person than they did in their photographs. Again, an instance of flat vs. reality. 

It ignored the stairs, leaping over the edge and doing what certain people would call a ‘superhero landing’ in the center of the loading bay. The guards, what few of them remained, retreated. A good choice - they weren’t being effective anyway. 

“You know, when I sent the message, I didn’t think it would take you that long,” the Doombot said. At this point, Vision could make a reasonable guess as to the cadence of the voice. 

“How did you restore yourself?” Vision asked politely, because this still fell under the category of ‘diversion’ and T’challa was almost done with the gunners. 

“Doom has an interest in checking out incidents in the Balkans, so a couple Doombots made the trek to Sokovia’s remnants. Their programming wasn’t quite ready for me.”

Vision could imagine the scene from that statement alone. Two Doombots, standing on the landing where he had last seen Ultron, evaluating the scene and having tracked a power source to that location – and Ultron using its last reserves of energy to bash through their programming and take a body. 

“It has it’s drawbacks,” the Doombot continued. “Cranky landlord. Stiff joints in the morning. Can’t fly.”

“You would look like a giant armored beetle,” Vision said mildly.

“So I’ve decided on an upgrade.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You.” Ultron pointed at the ground. Rather than looking down, Vision shot into the air, getting up to twenty feet before hitting an electric wall. He hadn’t experienced anything of that type since Barton had rigged up the trap in the apartment. Dropping down, he met another wall, perhaps six feet below. Left, right, diagonal – all invisible walls.

Below, Ultron walked in a circle beneath the invisible wall-box, like a caged shark. 

“Clint Barton is undisputedly the LAMEST of the Avengers, but you know who he stopped? YOU. For about thirty seconds before your girlfriend smashed your face in. And I am not above improving on…” Ultron thought about it. “Almost-competency.”

Push THROUGH, maybe? Vision exerted about 75% of his strength against the hinge point of the invisible box. No luck. The stone then – it merely shone through, without making a difference. He didn’t know all its nuances yet; perhaps there was a way but he didn’t know it right now.

“Where is Barnes?” he called down, to gain time.

“You know, I SHOULD care? Since Stark hates him and the enemy of my enemy kumbaya? But I don’t care.”

Vision noted the energy of the invisible box’s walls moving closer and closer, by inches but moving. 

“So, if you haven’t noticed, I’m trash compacting you,” Ultron said. “It took a HELL of a lot of time to get the plant, and the machines, and you here, BUT, I’m going to crumble you up like iron-boxing a unicorn, take the vibranium from your corpse, and go to the source myself, since certain people can’t pull that off without acquiring assassins.”

Vision internally shrugged, spying out the turrets that must be generating the laser wall – ah, six of them. If the stone passed through the invisible currents, it would destroy the turrets. 

The stone took out the turret generating the first wall, the one directly above him, and, he hadn’t anticipated this, the turret exploded. No. Too small a word. The ceiling portion that housed it caught on fire, covering a good thirty feet of the lofted ceiling in a matter of seconds, along with much of the wiring housed up there. It started railing turret shrapnel and ceiling bits – Vision went transparent and suddenly realized – he hadn’t looked for T’challa before firing at the turret. 

He flew up and out of the invisible walls, scanning the room for the king. 

This would be the second time.

The turret falling out of the ceiling was not unlike Rhodey falling out of the sky—

Vision looked down, some thirty feet, to where Ultron had stood. Several Doombots now clustered down there around another of their member. Rigid, unfriendly Doombots with an awareness to them.

“What is going on here?! Doom will not be supplanted!” one bellowed at the (presumably) Ultron-Doombot. As bits of ceiling rained down, the nearly-invulnerable bots were intent on getting this sorted out. The guards had, of course, attempted to flee the scene. The several bodies lying at the entrance to the loading bay suggested the Doombots were not interested in mercy.

“Doom has acted in Doom’s best interest!” the Ultron-Doombot bellowed back. “Do not question!”

This would take too long. Vision adjusted his coloring to appear even less conspicuous and glided slowly up to the gunners’ positions, where he had last seen T’challa. After minutes of searching, avoiding the glances of Doombots who KNEW he was here, Vision saw a flash of motion by one of the remaining turrets. 

T’challa was shoulder-deep in the turret, dislodging something deep in its workings. 

“Shall we go?” T’challa asked in Hausa. Perhaps the king had never encountered Doombots. Wakanda had been very isolated. 

“Two more.” T’challa dislodged what he needed and held it out for inspection. A vibranium battery. “A very short half-life, but I will not leave them here.”

Vision couldn’t argue with this logic, though he did look down into the bay at the cluster of Doombots again. They had finished with the Ultron-Doombot, which looked like it had involved a complete OS reboot, thrusting the hostile A.I. out of the body. Whether Ultron had gone anywhere after that was another question. 

Unfortunately, completing that meant that were looking around for who ELSE was here.

“We may be told to vacate the premises,” Vision replied. “Also, there is Mister Barnes’ situation to think of.”

T’challa wordlessly tucked the battery away and moved onto the next intact turret. As they walked, the murmuring of Doombots below began to take on a concerned, irritated tone. 

“They know we aren’t heading out,” Vision said quietly. 

“Please tell them we are collecting stolen Wakandan property, after which, we will cease trespassing.” 

“And the explosion?”

“We were also here to rescue a kidnapped individual who was under Wakandan asylum. That convoy is not here, but appears to be travelling towards Hungary.”

When Vision told the cluster of Doombots this information, the cluster of emotionless steel faces gave no indication of its reception.

“We will not inconvenience or destroy any other Latverian property and apologize for the necessity,” Vision added, trying to make the sentence sound friendlier. Not that friendly was a way to win with Doom, but it was worth trying…

“Be gone from here,” one Doombot said. “Now.” 

“We understand.” 

Upstairs, T’challa received the news without excitement and moved to stand at the railing and face the Doombots, batteries in his hands. 

“I am finished,” he said, projecting his voice to the group below. “From one king to another, I thank you for your patience.”

“Be gone from here!” one of the Doombots called back, but without an edge. Merely repeating what it had said before. T’challa acknowledged that he had heard the order and, without hurry, headed out of the open bay doors. The Doombots followed them, even as they went around the building and got into the sedan. Once they were out of sight of the complex, Vision shook his head and got on the road heading east.

“I am surprised Mister Barnes didn’t not wait,” the A.I. said mildly. “If several guards accompanied the vehicles, he runs the risk of being discovered.”

T’challa finished stowing the batteries in the glove compartment of the car and turned his attention to the darkening road ahead. Night had begun to set in and in a rural, open area like this, it set in quickly. 

“I would be more concerned for Klaw. His prosthetic arm is a compatible model to Barnes'.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God, that changed SO damn much from when I wrote it... and I wrote it not that long ago.
> 
> ALSO, the MCU confirmed that Everett and T'challa will be teaming up in Black Panther so *I* am super excited. On a related note, if anyone knows of fanfics centering on Ross and T'challa -- preferably adventure-type, not primarily romance -- lemme know. I can't find anything. 
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading. I write things people don't want to read all day, it's nice to write something people enjoy. :)


	10. Took the Liberty

The baseline criteria for the Bucky Barnes-sanctioned life plan was ‘Don’t die.’

Really, that was all he had had time to plan before life started throwing things at him. Not normal things either; more like ‘my asthmatic best friend is leaping tall buildings in a single bound’ and ‘getting shot off a train.’ 

Some things, of course, he did himself. Like climbing into the back of a large truck on its way out of a Latverian complex, heading to Hungary. He did still have the 10mm. His boot acted as a kind of compression to the swelling but… he wouldn’t be running anywhere. It had taken enough energy getting UNDER the truck without behind seen – then climbing up and in through the vertical double-wide doors after Klaw and the driver had entered the cab. He had to hold the door open, just so, until they were out on the road and he could adjust his position. 

Currently, his good leg, the right one, was on the inside of the door. His other leg dangled down, too high to hit the rushing ground. He held the other door at a careful angle so it wouldn’t swing wide and alert Klaw. Based on the entry points of their voices, someone other than Klaw was driving. The other ten men travelled ahead of them as a scout vehicle, armed to the teeth.

Moving slowly, also known as the only way he COULD move right now, Bucky moved the right leg out of the vehicle. Rotating his grip on the door, he flipped position to face the direction the car was travelling. All points good, so far. 

Reaching up, he grabbed the edge of the cargo rack bolted to the truck roof, using the side of his body to hold the door in place. It took a second, but he eased the door shut until it clicked. Stabilizing breath. 

It’s just a vault up to the top of the truck now. A jump, really. Come on. 

This is how people die. Simple, stupid things they’ve done a million times but can’t do anymore. 

SHUT IT.

He gripped the cargo rack handle, and – oh, hey, that was an idea – used the door handle for leverage to get on top of the truck. Wind blew harder up here, but he’d known that would be a factor. He got up and braced his feet against the underside of the cargo rack for support. 

There. Easy as that. Think of that door handle, that was easy enough, wasn’t it? 

Stabilizing breath, which twinged his shoulder, which was on fire with all the activity. 

At this point, he wanted to shoot T’challa more than apologize to the king. An arm, a single, intact arm without tracking devices, would have made this so much easier. But that was unproductive thinking. Steve and he used to chew out younger recruits for that, back in the war. You went morose in the field; you stopped being on the field and started being dead. You loved them, fought for them, but you didn’t let them sink. Not then. 

Kneeing his way forward, he progressed until he crouched on the intersection between truck and cab, just far enough back not to make a dent in the roof. Despite the night, Klaw had the window open and one arm on the sill. Not the prosthetic, but seeing it was enough to make Bucky think of the prosthetic. If he took over the truck, he could relieve Klaw of it, divert the truck’s path, reach a safe point easier.  
Driving with his left foot wouldn’t be a problem.

So thinking, he gripped the cargo rack bar and slid very carefully, very gently off the roof and onto the running board.

Klaw made a surprised grunt as a booted foot stepped onto the open windowsill, dislodging his arm. Bucky kicked with the other foot before the arms dealer could do anything practical, like shoot. It must have connected, because the man said “urk!” and nothing more. The soldier dropped down to the running board, finding an unconscious Klaw and a terrified Latverian driver who was speeding faster and faster and swerving, trying to throw him off.

Bucky hooked an elbow over the windowsill and pointed the gun at the driver. “Stop.” 

The truck rolled to a stop. 

“Get out.” 

Instead of moving, the driver glanced at Klaw. Bucky swung back, out of range of the window, just in time for Klaw to come swinging back to consciousness with a right hook. It didn’t connect, but was too close for comfort.

\--and then the driver floored the gas. Coughing, engine groaning, the truck accelerated. Klaw aimed back the length of the truck, his back braced against the dashboard as he sighted on the truck’s stowaway.

“Gotta learn to leave well enough alone, darlin’,” he told the soldier. 

The truck climbed in speed overall but they were approaching a turn, so it had to slow for that. Before Klaw could get a sighted shot, Bucky leapt off the running board, aiming for a gap in the trees. He made the gap and heard Klaw fire a couple of times into the gap. None connected, mainly because the ‘gap’ was more than a gap; it hid an embankment of some ten, fifteen feet. 

Bucky had to roll to reduce momentum from the truck, otherwise he would have grabbed something and concentrated on skidding. Finally, he came to a stop on the edge of some farmland. It smelled like farmland, anyway.

Moments passed and he let them. He was half-under a young bush and could see the sky, bits of it, through the leaves. The truck motored onward. Klaw wouldn’t be coming down to finish the job. Not with all those guns in the back, waiting to be smuggled into Hungary and beyond. As for Bucky following him on foot – heh. Literal foot. He would take the boot off, but literally didn’t know if he could with one hand.

That thought set him back again. Come on, start climbing the embankment, soldier; this isn’t the time. He got to a kneeling position and his ankle would allow him to go no further. It might not have been as severe if he hadn’t fractured it on the table back at the compound and THEN used it to kick Klaw, very hard, in the head. He’d felt it fracture again, then, and there was no telling what the fall had done. ‘Everything hurt,’ that was kind of a blanket statement. 

“Fine, the boot stays on then,” he murmured. The embankment had a gentle curve, possible while dragging a leg (for the most part) behind him, and he had maintained the strong core necessary to make it up with only one hand. Maintaining the mental state necessary was getting… harder. He began to climb.

He’d never grieved the loss of his arm.

He hadn’t felt enough ownership of his own body to do something like recognize a part of himself was foreign. It was like a child with poor eyesight receiving glasses soon after the diagnosis. The fix was immediate and total.

An arm was not near-sightedness, but he had been conditioned to accept it as such. 

The moon kept pace with his journey, like a fishing boat heading inexorably home. By the time he reached the road again, it felt like one or two in the morning. The sound of an approaching vehicle presented a source of relief, rather than a threat. Finally, there would be a voice outside of his head. Even if he had to kill it.

#

The headlights skittered over an unlikely shadow on the roadway. Vision immediately slowed down and T’challa leaned forward. The car stopped. Neither jumped out. 

Barnes kneeled on the side of the road, a small gun pointed at the sedan’s tires. 

“Is it likely he has been compromised?” Vision asked quietly. 

“I have faith in the man who created the wall,” T’challa replied with equal quiet. “I will get him, but I will drive, following this.”

The door clicked open and T’challa stepped out, keeping the door temporarily between himself and the soldier.

“Mr. Barnes?”

The 10mm – T’challa could see it now in the headlights, lowered. The soldier’s tone just sounded quizzical and tired, not hostile. 

“You didn’t bring Ross?”

Odd question. “No. This is too dangerous an environment and I had somewhere else I could deploy him.” Silence. “Have you been compromised, Mr. Barnes?”

“Depends.” 

This could be either self-loathing or an honest answer. T’challa leaned towards the former, but had to assess all options.

“What was the message you sent Everett Ross?”

“It – I don’t know. It wasn’t me.”

“How did they obtain your codes, then?” T’challa asked. He had not forgotten that every moment spent here, on this roadside, meant Klaw was escaping into Hungary, but Wakanda’s relationship with Captain America depended on keeping THIS man safe. 

“They outfitted me with an arm,” Barnes said. “Ultron hacked it, after I used it. I didn’t – I didn’t think about using it, it was just… there.” The soldier looked away. “They didn’t get at me though. You can test the code words, if you want. They don’t work.” 

“It will not be necessary.” T’challa gestured at the vehicle. “If you’re not going to shoot out our tires, you can join our road trip to apprehend Klaw.”

The soldier hesitated and for a moment T’challa wondered: did the man want to stay here? Had he misjudged and pushed Barnes beyond what the man could take? Clearly, the pursuit of information at the complex had not gone well, but Barnes was still intact.

“I’ll snipe for you, if you have a gun,” Barnes said, very quietly. “But you’re going to have to help me get into the car.”

T’challa approached the soldier as Barnes holstered his gun. As the soldier reached up to brace himself on the taller man’s shoulder, T’challa could see now that his boot had swollen so tightly it acted as a splint. Barnes probably couldn’t remove it, one-handed.

“Sorry ‘bout this,” Bucky said, leaning heavily on him as they walked back to the car. “I know you’re a king and all.”

“Pledging medical assistance does not end at Wakanda’s borders.” 

“Oh.” The soldier grunted. The sentence clearly had not made the situation any easier to bear, so T’challa amended it.

“And I did try to kill you for a while.”

“It’s amazing that you didn’t, actually.” Barnes balanced on one foot as T’challa opened the backseat door. “I remember Romania clearly. I was… myself. And without Steve, you would’ve definitely killed me.”

“I’ve not informed Steve Rogers of your situation. Would you like me to?” T’challa asked, as the soldier got in. 

“I’d rather he didn’t know about it until–” the soldier paused, mid-sentence. “I’m not going on ice again, am I.”

“If the wall held through this, it seems likely it would hold through anything.” T’challa shut the door and crossed to the driver’s side. Vision, who had been patiently waiting, looked up as he got in. The A.I.’s presence clearly unnerved the soldier, who hadn’t seen him since the Germany incident. Having an unnerved sniper was not something to be ignored.

Vision murmured in Hausa: “Would it be better if he waited in a town? It is not safe, where we are going.”

“He wants to come,” T’challa replied, still in Hausa. Then, in English: “I was concerned that you might have sustained injury, so we brought first aid – as well as a replacement arm.”

A pair of tired but sharp eyes snapped up to meet the rearview mirror, suddenly wide with surprise.

“You brought… what?”

“It was necessary to send you back with Klaw one-armed, so they would feel confident. This was also due to limited resources at the time. Tony Stark, however, sent an arm, care of Everett Ross after hearing about the evolving situation.”

The eyes narrowed. “Sure it’s not rigged to explode?”

“Your TSA agents were quite thorough.” T’challa didn’t mention TSA had been extremely thorough even when the prosthetic arm WASN’T involved. He was, as always, a ‘foreigner first’ in United States airports. “And Stark would not risk his relationship with Wakanda by handing over an explosive arm.”

Vision phased out of focus in order to move into the backseat and assist Barnes with attaching the arm. The soldier seemed a little in shock. The arm took just minutes to attach and the distraction allowed T’challa to increase their speed. Klaw would be getting close to the border by now, but the convoy was weighted down and carrying many more men. He wouldn’t be anticipating a chase, not with Barnes out of the way. They could still catch up.

He would, however, have to modify some information with Ross… 

Vision climbed back up into the front seat. “I took the liberty of providing him with the sniper rifle from the complex,” the A.I. said, again in Hausa. “I am not responsible for what he does with it.”

T’challa nodded. “We’ll catch up to them in 1.15 hours.”

“Do you need rest?”

“No. Barnes might.” 

“He is… already doing that,” T’challa said, with a trace of amusement. “He insisted he wakes up quickly.”

They rode in silence for a long moment before Vision said: “You didn’t tell him I brought the arm.”

“If he believes Stark is open to forgiving him, he will be more effective in his role. At present, he distrusts you as an A.I. You were, and to him still are, a thing that can be controlled. And he cannot trust those. The arm would not change his assumptions.”

“Why do you spend so much time thinking about this?” Vision asked.

“I still find myself wondering how I became pulled into the madness of their Civil War, and why I came so close to murdering for revenge. All motivations cannot be so surface-level. Why would my father have wanted to rejoin a world full of impulsive leaders? We have a surplus of angry tribes in Wakanda, we have no need to step outside and seek chaos. That is why I contemplate the workings of individual minds. They affect Wakanda. Barnes has been the heart of the quarrel that originated when my father died. He is the event horizon, even if only serving as a proxy for Zemo.”

Vision made an interested sound. T’challa mentally reflected that this was the most he had said to anyone except Ross for quite some time. Even with Ross, he rarely explained the deeper levels of his thinking (and to be honest, this wasn’t even that deep).

They drove on. 

#

Oh sure. ‘Just arrange for us to have a ride in Warsaw. Wait, no, now it’s Slovakia, Ross, could you be a dear please and just make that happen? Thanks.’

Except there would be no ‘please’ and there would be no ‘thanks.’ 

Well. There might be, but they would be obligatory. Ross always felt like the client was politely pretending to need other people and would really like to just do it all himself. The client just kept running into the unpleasant fact that he was one person, and that one person liked to run around in a cat suit sometimes.

And not, say, try to change flights from Warsaw to Slovakia for a third party who was native to a country that wasn’t the country you were calling from.

The client could have done this in thirty seconds. Ross was ALMOST sure. As a special U.S. liaison to the king of Wakanda, it had taken Everett Ross forty-eight minutes so far to try and change passage from Warsaw to Letisko Poprad-Tatry, in Slovakia. Only, the airline they’d originally booked on didn’t fly there.

“Yes, thank you, cancel BOTH the tickets, they won’t be needing them.” 

Ugh. 

Who DID fly there? He Googled it hurriedly. Airlines with terrible track records or tiny planes that crashed almost as often as celebrities at John Wayne. He sat back in the uncomfortable Starbucks chair (they hadn’t been invited back to the lawyer’s apartment after it got destroyed) and thought.

He did, technically, have access to a quinjet. A quinjet could get to Slovakia. 

He did, somewhere, have access to someone who stole things. 

Oh my God, he thought sharply. Am I really thinking of trying to find a shrinking criminal to steal a quinjet for me? Just to avoid calling another airline attendant? Yes. Yes I am. Oh God, that sounds preferable.

Or… he could do something that would get his ass handed to him by the client. 

He dialed.

It wasn’t a flight attendant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry there's such a gap between chapters.


	11. Finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the end.

#

Hours passed, as did the night. T’challa wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but a night’s sleep sounded incredibly pleasant. He hadn’t slept on the plane, nor much the day before, and the Latverian complex had been one long exhausting creep followed by a battle. Barnes, in the back, was a reminder that he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Vision would take over the driving, naturally, if T’challa asked, but that would look weak.

Or – not weak, just human really. 

After what seemed an eternity, the A.I. leaned forward, face glowing inhuman colors in the blue light of the dashboard. 

“They are within wifi range,” he said. 

Immediately, T’challa cut the lights and started decreasing his speed. The poorly-kept road jostled them along, full of potholes and branches that he could no longer avoid until his vision adjusted to the moonlight. Vision kept staring ahead, intermittently giving instructions. 

“They’re turning left. The border would be straight ahead. The only thing to the south is patchy forest.”

“Then into patchy forest we go.”

In the back of the sedan, the soldier’s breathing pattern changed. T’challa noted the passage of time as the other man took stock of his surroundings, status, and drew conclusions about the woodland environment and bumpy road.

“They’re diverting?” Bucky asked finally. 

“The truck with our driver is. The other, we’re not sure.” 

The soldier went silent again and T’challa could almost hear his mind whirring. If Barnes had use of both feet, T’challa had no doubt the soldier would volunteer to jump out of the vehicle and go find (and end) the members of the other truck. But he couldn’t, and he couldn’t volunteer anyone else to go after the other truck because, at the end of the day, this was T’challa’s mission and his command, even if it meant they were at risk of ambush. The soldier stayed quiet, probably waiting for more intel.

Vision came through with it, seconds later.

“They don’t like the look of the border,” the A.I. said, intently listening to… something. “Too much chatter and light. They’re expecting someone they know to the south to open a way for them. They will switch trucks over the border and continue the journey.”

“Their passports won’t add up,” Barnes said.

“I expect they have a workaround,” Vision replied. “But they plan to get it done quickly.”

“Can you disable their vehicles?” T’challa asked. “Preferably outside of a town.”

Vision nodded. “They will turn their environment into a combat zone. Perhaps it is time to call for help?”

“When we have need of it. Until then, Barnes has a sniper rifle and both of us are accustomed to working in the dark and in tactical situations. Stranded, the men will be easy to overcome.”

Vision didn’t argue. It was fast becoming one of the most appealing things about working with him, in T’challa’s opinion. Any solution other than this one would take significantly longer and increase the risk of collateral damage, without necessarily increasing the odds of success. After working out a brief play-by-play, T’challa eased off the pedal and the sedan ghosted towards the two trucks ahead of them. 

As their best-suited person for recon, Vision glided forward, through the dashboard, the hood of the car, and into the darkness beyond. T’challa didn’t have to tell him which truck should be disabled first. He saw the second truck stop when the first one’s lights veered off road. Then, the second truck’s lights went off.

He and Bucky sat in the dark of the sedan. After a few seconds, the soldier pushed open the left-side backseat door, almost noiselessly, and T’challa heard the hushed ‘tak’ as the sniper rifle settled into position. Still, the two trucks up ahead gave no sign of activity.

After several more seconds of silence, T’challa opened his door. He saw Barnes glance up at him in the rearview mirror, but the soldier didn’t move. 

“Thirty seconds. Concentrate on the north sector,” T’challa said. “You won’t see me. Vision will come back when we’re clear.”

The soldier focused on the darkened scene ahead of them again, nodding once. The ground beneath T’challa’s boots gave no sound as he stepped out of the sedan. One of the few advantages of poorly-kept dirt roads. T’challa walked quietly towards the scene, hearing the muffled conversation of the men discussing the car. They were arguing about it being the axle and wear on the tires, and that someone never replaced the spark plugs like they had promised. 

Only three men stood around the truck, having the discussion in near-darkness, except for a grouping of cell phone flashlights. There should be a total of ten inside and possibly two inside the other vehicle. T’challa didn’t want to find them the moment he had revealed himself. 

There were two soft ‘pops’ from the direction of the sedan. Two of the men arguing at the truck dropped, one spinning from a bullet in his shoulder, the other suddenly unstable from a bullet in his knee. The third man dove in front of the engine to take cover. Yet no one came from inside the canvas back of the truck, or emerged from the second truck with its darkened lights to help. 

Either they knew they were being baited or Vision had gotten to them. Probably the former, T’challa determined. 

Without moving into either truck’s direct line of sight, he snatched the third man’s collar and pulled him into the darkness of the trees, rendering him unconscious before he could scream. You had to work fast and accurate in a situation like this. 

Still, no one came from inside the man’s truck to help.

Ignoring the first truck for the moment, T’challa surveyed the second truck for a point of entry. He spotted Vision then, sitting on its roof. The A.I. could see him, the inhuman eyes glittering even in the dim light. T’challa gave sign that he had seen the A.I. and gestured at the first truck. 

Vision obligingly ghosted into the first truck’s canvas back, his skin glimmering faintly yellow as he vanished. The truck emptied in a matter of seconds, seven men barreling out with weapons into the blackness of the scene. 

T’challa ignored them and moved towards the silent driver’s compartment of the second truck. Shouts of alarm and gunfire rang out as Bucky and Vision took on the group that had just entered their field of vision. From their grunts and falls, the soldier was keeping to non-fatal shots. Anything might be fatal without medical treatment, but these were careful shots. 

Vision just dropped people, like a particularly vindictive seagull faced with a receding tide full of crabs. The falls were also not fatal, but distinctly unpleasant and bone-breaking. 

T’challa climbed to the top of the second truck and, with a strategically-placed blow from above, broke the driver’s side window. The occupant pushed open the door but otherwise didn’t emerge. Wise, but irritating. 

With regard to the first truck’s militia, T’challa heard the shouting turn to groaning. The return fire slowed to a trickle. Now it was just men on the ground, trying to continue reloading in the face of a shattered kneecap or useless shoulder. It wasn’t kind, but T’challa didn’t have much patience for kind. These men would smuggle weapons into Wakanda and steal vibranium for a profit. That didn’t deserve kind. 

Meanwhile, the driver climbed out of the door with his hands raised; a scared if shadowy figure in the meager light. T’challa let him scuttle towards the woods, noting his clothing and his lack of a gun. The Latverian probably took the job for the money and wanted nothing to do with what was happening right now – and had no intention of firing on anyone. 

Someone from the first truck had made it back to a standing position, under cover from the truck hood, and was returning fire on the sedan. T’challa assessed the situation.

Based on the trajectory of the shooter, Barnes was having trouble with shot placement. No fire came from the sedan. T’challa could mentally picture the soldier shifting position, trying to get the shooter in his sights. Then the passenger-side door opened and (presumably) Klaw hurried out the other side, circling to the back of the truck. 

That changed matters. T’challa leapt from the front of the second truck to the back as the arms-dealer began returning fire on the sedan. The vehicle was now under assault from both sides. Distantly, T’challa heard Barnes clamber roughly out onto the soft dirt as bullets peppered the windows, shattering at least two. 

Having addressed the sniper situation, Klaw whirled, pointing the gun up at the top of the second truck.

“Your highness!”

T’challa said nothing and did not move into the arms-dealer’s line of sight.

“I don’t appreciate being followed when you already have Barnes,” Klaw said, his voice gravel. “I’ve a business to run. I’m sure you can relate.”

T’challa idly analyzed the branch configuration and if he could drop directly on Klaw’s head from above. The setup wasn’t right. That was a pity. 

“Do I not have your full attention?” Klaw continued. “If you wanted a conversation, that’s what we could have. But maybe you’re thinking of the time.” Turning, he fired two shots back at the sedan. The worn rental tires were not prepared for the stress and exploded with impressive ‘puffs’. Then, Klaw pointed the gun at the second truck’s rear tire and looked expectantly up at where he thought T’challa crouched. 

“I never carry a spare, your highness. Now, perhaps you want to solve this amicably, or will we all have a long walk home, including your lame friend?” Klaw asked.

“You wouldn’t strand your cargo,” T’challa said.

Klaw immediately yanked the gun up to fire in the direction of his voice, missing widely. T’challa slipped down on the far side of the truck, whirring through options. 

He could easily take Klaw hand-to-hand, but the pained militia members sprawled around the trucks were beginning to stir and reload. Most were going to be firing back at the sedan that had taken out so many of them. Eventually, the concentration of bullets might take out the sedan’s fuel tank. It was debatable how far Barnes would be from it when that happened. 

So the militia needed to be addressed. Crouched near the second truck’s cab, T’challa could see the muzzle of Klaw’s gun and part of his arm to the rear of the truck. Not moving. Waiting. 

The darkness served as his ally. In a sprint, T’challa stole across the battlefield of Klaw’s wounded militia, striking out wherever he heard the sound of bullets chambering or grunts of exertion. He had trained this way many, many times in Wakanda; the process didn’t take more than twenty-six seconds. Long enough for Klaw to realize he was moving, but not long enough for him to place an accurate shot in the darkness. 

When T’challa finished, perched on the roof of the first truck, Vision had slipped behind Klaw and now held him about twenty feet over the two trucks and the darkened scene. The arms-dealer shouted and struggled, quieting only as he realized his men were unresponsive. T’challa moved to stand in the man’s dim line of sight.

“We will return you to your country of origin,” he said evenly. “Wakanda’s method of addressing your crimes would not suffice.”

Klaw grinned and, jerking a hand towards the second truck, fired uncertainly at the tires. Luck was on his side – a tire began hissing air. T’challa sighed inwardly. Ross would be furious to fly out here, which meant an uninterrupted nap was even further away than he had thought.

“You think Doom will take well to you remaining in Latveria?” Vision asked his captive quizzically, observing the tire’s deflation. “If he knows of your connection to Ultron, he will not be far behind us.” 

“Doom and I will come to an arrangement,” the arms-dealer said confidently – confidently for a man whose feet were 20 feet off the ground, in any case. “The question is, what the hell are you going to do now?”

#

Nobody flies where you want to go.

That was how Ross was going to lead into the conversation with T’challa. He had spent about eight hours coming up with it. The reason had beat out all the alternatives, such as “Well, Friday has a really sexy voice,” and “Quinjets are just nicer,” and “I wanted an airborne vehicle that I could trust this time.”

No, the only thing the client was going to believe was that this was born of necessity. It had also been free, which was a selling point to Ross but wouldn’t have been to the client. In terms of function, the quinjet ran beautifully and silently over the Latverian countryside, avoiding Doom’s many, many detection systems for vehicles just like it. 

The only thing that ruined the trip was that Stark kept talking about how wonderful the quinjet (and by extension he) was. 

Ross couldn’t tear his gaze away from his cell phone and its pinging of Vision’s self-reported signal, to which they drew ever closer. Stark only needed an ‘uh-huh’ and ‘fascinating’ every once in a while to keep him happy. Thank God, Ross could do that much without losing his place.

“Looks like we found the party,” Stark said, interrupting his own sentence about the quinjet’s highly-efficient engines. “Fifteen or so people. His highness know you’re coming yet?”

“I think he still expects to be flying out of the airport,” Ross said, pushing through the last traces of nervousness about that and hurriedly texting Vision: ‘We’re here’. 

Stark had already gone to the cockpit to begin the quinjet’s descent, aiming for a clearing just south of the group. Ross moved back towards the cargo door, gripping one of the handholds and trying to work up his nerve. You don’t have to jump out of the plane this time, he reminded himself. This is purely a meet-greet-and-get-in-your-seat situation. 

The cargo door slid open, the quinjet still a good hundred feet above the clearing and descending. Okay, this looked good; the majority of people were tied up. Both T’challa and Vision were looking up at the quinjet and neither was tied up. Excellent. Klaw was hobbled up with what looked like a set of jumper cables, guarded by Barnes, who was not tied up. Excellent, excellent. The quinjet came to a gentle stop, its landing still sending a shower of dust over the waiting group. Everett waved with false brightness and waited for the coughing to die down.

“Surprise! Vision mentioned you needed a lift and no airlines fly out of here, actually,” Ross called out to the group, who began moving towards the opening cargo door.

“Were you observed by Doom?” the client asked immediately. 

Ross shook his head. “No. But this quinjet only carries around seven people so, uh… me, Stark, you, Vision, Klaw, Barnes… the rest of them stay.”

“We have alerted Latverian medics and law enforcement, who are on their way to treat the wounded,” the client replied. Behind him, Bucky cut the hobbles (yup, jumper cables) on Klaw’s legs and pushed him forward. The soldier had a bit of a stiffness to his gait. If it were a point of concern, the client would’ve commented on it already, Ross decided. Better to let everybody keep functioning if they appeared to be functioning. 

“I think you’ll find I’m hard to prosecute,” Klaw said merrily, even as Bucky took a pair of handcuffs from Ross and chained them around the one of the quinjet’s seat bars. “Harder, when I know you’ve illegally flown into Latveria to collect me.”

“Ah, well, you’re just that special,” Stark said, emerging from the quinjet’s cockpit. Meandering back to the cargo door, he inclined his head a little in respect to T’challa.

“Your highness.”

“Thank you for meeting us here, Mr. Stark,” the client replied.

“Would’ve suited up but I see you figured out how to solve your Ultron issue alone.”

“We are more appreciative of the vehicle,” T’challa said, voice even. “I regret you were inconvenienced. Have the Adametco payments—”

“Yes, they’ve stopped, I did my due diligence, thanks for asking,” Stark replied. Ross was about to ask when they would be taking off when he noticed the man’s gaze: Stark was looking past the king at Barnes, who had taken a seat across from Klaw and seemed prepared to watch the arms-dealer for the next several hours. 

It wasn’t subtle. Once he had everyone’s attention, Stark glanced at the soldier, though clearly speaking to the client. “Though truth be told, the quinjet is pretty crowded even with six. And you only brought the one set of handcuffs.”

“You knew he was part of the arrangement,” the client replied, closing the cargo door. 

“Honestly, I thought he’d be dead.” Stark said it with a certain level of disappointment. “But yeah, thrilled to get my parents’ murderer out of a tight spot.”

The soldier looked puzzled. It had been a little odd that he hadn’t edged around Stark, Ross thought. But between the tense foreign-country situation and the time issue, it hadn’t been unexpected. What were they going to do, leave him in Latveria? 

“Yeah, I’m talking to you,” Stark said to Barnes. “You just walk on my plane? Arm’s not the only thing made of metal.”

“I… you sent me the arm. I thought…” the soldier began with some confusion. “I – thank you?”

Now Stark looked puzzled. “What now?”

“Ross brought the arm from you.” 

“I didn’t give you or Ross an arm. Why would I do anything for you?”

Confused, Barnes looked to the client, but the king seemed to ignore the conversation entirely. With some hesitation, Barnes stood, now only giving Klaw half his attention. The arms dealer was giving the conversation his full attention.

“I received some bad intel,” Bucky said. Klaw laughed.

“Yeah, wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” Bitterness soured Stark’s words and the soldier glanced away. Vision coughed, which sounded about as natural as a dog commenting “bow wow.”

“I believe I was the source of that intel,” the A.I. clarified. Stark stared at him. “You, Mr. Stark, have advanced prosthetics in the lab and it was not an option to reenter Wakanda to obtain one. You have commented after working with Rhodey’s rehabilitation that you now truly realize the impact the loss of a limb could have. It was a logical assumption that you would want to help anyone suffering a similar situation, so, I removed a model prosthetic from the designs you built for that charitable event at the hospital.” 

Vision’s words rang with sincerity. Stark’s eyes narrowed and he took a breath to tear the A.I.’s “logic” apart.

“Will I be able to return to the States with you?” Barnes asked, before Stark could launch into an explanation of why giving the Winter Soldier an arm went against all logic. Despite its urgent tone, Barnes’s question sounded rote. A certain answer was expected. The soldier had already prepared himself for it.

“I don’t know, how are those triggers of yours doing?” Stark shot back, anger deflecting to the soldier. “They been linked online yet? Taylor Swift do a song about them? They’re pretty melodramatic, I bet she could.”

Though Ross was 99.9% sure the soldier didn’t know who Taylor Swift was, Stark might as well have said ‘no’ directly. The light of interest switched off in Barnes’ expression. Whatever he had thought about Stark forgiving him obviously wasn’t the case. Ross glanced covertly over at T’challa, hoping the client would have some kind of answer… but T’challa had folded his arms to watch.

Damn.

“Stark, we talked about this before we left,” Ross began. “You knew we were picking up Barnes.”

“We didn’t talk about taking him back to the States. Now that I’m seeing him, I’ve got some second thoughts about smuggling in an assassin.”

“You have another plan?” the soldier asked Stark.

“You could guard these men until the medics arrive.” Stark gestured at the militia lying in the darkness outside the quinjet. “I don’t care where you go after that, but I’m not smuggling you back into the States.”

Barnes thought for a moment, then glanced at the client.

“Canada,” he said. “Is Canada still an option?” 

The client nodded once. That was enough: Barnes returned unsteadily to his seat across the way from Klaw. 

“I’m sorry about your family and what I’ve done to you,” Barnes continued, sitting down across from Klaw. “But I’m not staying in Latveria for your grudge.”

“Canada is a promise I made to him, if he helped me with this,” the client said, finally entering the conversation. “If you will not assist him in arriving there, you will also be leaving myself, Vision, and Klaw in Latveria.”

“And please don’t do that,” Ross said quickly. “I don’t speak Latverian and, frankly, I’m terrified of Doom. Speaking of which, can we go?”

Stark shot a final look at the soldier but strode to the front of the quinjet to take his seat. Barnes gave no sign of relief except for closing his eyes. The silence in the quinjet quickly became muddled by the sound of it taking off and climbing, leveling off well below the radar of Doom’s defenses but out of the trees. Murmuring in the background was Stark’s assistant Friday, plotting a course that probably included Canadian forests. The client took a seat near the cargo door, close enough to react if Klaw did anything sudden, but not far from the cockpit either. For lack of better options, Ross sat near him with a respectful seat between them. The client was, as always, royalty. 

“Thank you,” Barnes said, after a few minutes of silence. The words sounded small and detached in the confined space of the quinjet. When the client did not immediately reply, Klaw jumped on it. 

“You think that’ll be it?” Klaw asked. “Kill a bunch of people throughout the world, then hide in Wakanda, destroy a hanger bay there, and then vanish into the land of maple syrup and plaid? What about the first time your captain needs you then, eh?” 

“Steve does fine without me,” Barnes replied.

“Ahhh, but you don’t do fine without him. Let’s face it, you don’t do fine without someone to take orders from, whether that’s the captain or the king or the whole Hydra army—”

“No one controls me.” The words dripped with disdain and fire. “I choose. Same as anyone.”

“Most people who choose to kill the number you have “choose” to spend their lives on death row. You offed the Iron Man’s mummy and daddy. You think he’s going to let you wander off like Sasquatch?” 

The soldier stopped replying, though his expression didn’t change. Good, Ross thought. For the best if former sleeper agents weren’t homicidally bantering with arms dealers. From the fact that the client had closed his eyes and leaned back in the quinjet seat, sleep had been in short supply for everyone. Vision sat down next to Bucky, murmuring something. The soldier hesitated a moment, then nodded and shifted to a seat closer to the cockpit, folded his arms, and went to sleep. Vision took the newly-empty seat to keep an eye on Klaw.

It seemed a bit unsoldier-y – but it would be a long flight. If Klaw got noisy, Vision could deal with that.

#

Since everyone except Vision had dropped off, T’challa moved quietly from the sleeper compartment (as it now seemed to be) and into the cockpit, where Stark was moodily flying the quinjet and being snarky at Friday, the quinjet’s A.I. 

“I know you don’t see enough passports on board, that’s why we’re landing eighteen miles out of Quebec,” the man snapped at her as T’challa entered the compartment.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Friday said silkily from the speakers mounted in the side walls. “Hello, King T’challa.”

“Highness,” Stark muttered. 

T’challa sat down next to him without speaking. Ross had intimated that he should go in and ‘play nice’ but he had already been aware of the strain. He both liked and disliked Stark. But the man came closer to his intellect than most of the Avengers, so the relationship wasn’t one he wanted to lose over this.

“It’s good of you to design arms for hospital patients,” T’challa said. 

Stark said nothing for a long moment. Then, finally, his voice quiet: “It wasn’t just any hospital. It was the V.A. Stepping on mines, getting shot, delays of care, being treated in the field… there’s a lot of amputees. I saw it happen when I had to build the first suit. I know what it did to me, having the arc reactor keeping me alive, but it was operable. And I’m me.” Another long pause. “I developed some of the tech that’s blowing them up. It was back-engineered based on my designs.”

“I know. And it is my understanding that Barnes lost his arm during the war.” 

“He did a lot of things after the war!”

“Has his war ever ended?” T’challa asked. 

Stark looked at him fiercely and muttered an American swear. “Never knew you to take anyone’s side.”

“I’m not. You’re still bringing him to Canada, having done for him only what you would do for someone else,” T’challa replied. “He lived undetected in Romania for some time, he can certainly survive Canada.”

Stark scowled. “Unfortunately.”

T’challa sighed internally. The man could be extremely fussy about things for much longer than seemed necessary. No amount of sniping at Barnes would bring his parents back, just as no amount of threatening Zemo would undo the bomb blast – 

Zemo. 

He turned and headed back to the compartment. “Barnes.”

The Winter Soldier leaned forward as if he had never been sleeping. “Highness.” 

“Zemo escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.”

Barnes sat a little straighter, attentive. “Do you know where he was headed?”

“My sources put him in York, near Maryland, heading west.” T’challa paused. “Are you in good health?”

“Always. How close will we pass over?” 

“Stark plans to drop you off in St. John. We’ll pass over Nova Scotia.” T’challa had looked at Stark’s map closely. Originally, the man probably would have dumped Barnes in Nova Scotia, but it was too close to Maine and American airspace. Stark didn’t want Barnes swimming back.

“You’ll make sure everyone’s buckled in?” Barnes asked, already removing one of the parachutes from its fixture on the wall.

“Of course.” Still, T’challa felt a hint of doubt for the other man’s physical health. Working with the Dora Milaje – who rarely injured and were skilled at hiding it – had forced him to develop the ability to immediately assess health status. Barnes still wasn’t putting all his weight on the right foot and any parachuting in would require stability – and possibly swimming. 

The soldier seemed to notice his concern, forcing a half-smile.

“I’m going, Highness. There’s more purpose in this than in going to Canada,” Barnes said. “But I appreciate everything you’ve done. And, and your photographs as evidence –” He looked at his hand a moment. “…how do you get them?”

“As soon as you enter an internet connection area, they will upload. You don’t have to do anything.”

“Ah.” Barnes put his hand in his pocket uncomfortably, then pulled it back out again and held it out. “Sorry, I don’t know how Wakandans leave each other. Thank you.”

T’challa shook the proffered hand. “This will do.”

Barnes took a step towards the door, then glanced back at Vision, who was watching the exchange wordlessly. 

“And thanks for the arm,” he told the A.I.

“You’re welcome, Sergeant Barnes.”

“I’ll alert you when we’re at the drop point,” T’challa said. “Is there anything you would like me to tell the captain, if I see him?”

“Nah,” the soldier sat down in the seat closest to the cargo door, parachute strapped to his back. “I’ll see him soon enough.” He looked at T’challa, gaze unflinching. “I mean it, about the help. Thank you.”

“Just jump out on time.”

#

Six weeks later, Zemo was delivered in handcuffs to the authorities in Baltimore with an extensive list of his crimes and a phone number for Everett Ross. Klaw went to prison in the Netherlands. 

Barnes acquired a Canadian passport, which pinged T’challa’s radar as fake shortly after its issue. No less amusing was the soldier’s cover employment as a Tim Horton’s baker.

Adametco ceased operations and Doom was noticeably more irritable to the international community than usual for several weeks.

Tony started going to therapy. Not that anyone was supposed to know that, but T’challa kept track of the therapists in the Iron Man’s vicinity, or when highly-skilled therapists were suddenly moved to undisclosed locations near superheroes. 

Ross went back to work with a long list of business expenses. Deadpool did whatever absurd things he did with his time (which was mostly watching Golden Girls. T’challa had checked once. Never again). Matt Murdock switched apartments. Dave did nothing other than make great pizza and live alone in the wilderness of Maine. 

And T’challa… was both warrior and king.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end. I'm sorry, it shouldn’t have taken more than a year to finish this fic. I really shouldn’t be finishing it just to have it finished before Black Panther or Infinity War come out and make the entire thing irrelevant.   
> But, it did, and I am, and I’m sorry. 
> 
> But! You get a conclusion to this absurdly complicated story I’ve created. I appreciate anyone who hung in there with me, and apologize for inaccuracies.

**Author's Note:**

> I fully intend to complete this fic, however, I am heavily motivated by kudos. They show up in my inbox like people shouting at me across the internet. :) Thank you for reading!


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